THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 3 7‘f- 7a RHHr) Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. University of Illinois Library L161— 0-1096 NATIONAL EDUCATION. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/nationaleducatioOOrigg NATIONAL EDUCATION in its (Sncinl Cnnbitions anb Jlspttts, anb PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL EDUCATION ENGLISH AND FOREIGN By JAMES H. RIGG, D.D. PRINCIPAL OF WESTMINSTER TRAINING COLLEGE, AND MEMBER OF THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD, AUTHOR OF “modern ANGLICAN THEOLOGY,” “ESSAYS FOR THE TIMES ON- ECCLESIASTICAL AND SOCIAL SUBJECTS,” ETC. ETC. STRAHAN & CO. 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON •873 /_ LONDON : PRINTKI) BY VIRTUH AND CO., CITY ROAD. 4 73 .^^ PEEFACE. u; — ^xVTIONx\L education is a much wider and deeper matter than it is generally taken to be. One er ; . 276 NATIONAL EDUCATION, practically it amounts to nothing. Not even in all the Model Schools is it practically operative ; although, if claimed in any of these, it would of course be enforced. It will be evident, from what has been now shown, how thoroughly denominational in their character and influence are most of the Irish schools, not only the Non-Yested, but many also of the Vested. In all the Irish schools, the ‘‘ unsectarian ’’ schools of Ireland, the catechisms of the respective denomina- tions are taught by the school-teacher — the catechism of the Westminster Confession by the Presbyterian teacher, the Church catechism by the Episcopalian teacher, the Eomish catechism by the Eoman Catholic teacher. In all, the clergymen of the respective de- nominations give specific religious instruction them- selves ; all the schoolrooms are used as Sunday- schools ; in nearly all, the children are prepared for confirmation by their spiritual pastors ; most are used by the denomination to which the patrons belong on the week-night for denominational purposes as well as on the Sunday. The schools are managed, all alike, by denominational patrons, who, in nearly all cases, are clergymen, who are checked by no committee, but govern absolutely alone, and who can dismiss a teacher (according to a very precise rule of the Irish Board) at their mere option, with or without reason, without reason assigned either to the teacher or any one else. Finally, in all the Irish schools, whether A^ested or Nonnested, religious instruction may be given by patron or by the teacher at any fixed hour during the ordinary school hours, besides the instruc tion given before or after hours. This last concession PRIMARY EDUCATION IN IRELAND, 277 to denominationalism, forced on the Board by the Presbyterians, Avho had a powerful co-religionist ally, a member of their own Synod, on the Board itself, has been turned to abundant profit in Eomish convent and fraternity schools. In our English de- nominational schools, on the other hand, there is no irresponsible priest-patron, but a responsible local committee, and no religious instruction whatever can be given at any time within the fixed school hours reserved by the Act. In our denominational schools, moreover, the Government cannot pay more than half — cannot well, on an average, pay more than about two-fifths — of the cost of maintaining the school ; whereas in Ireland the national revenue contributes sometimes the whole, in most cases nearly the whole, in all cases, I believe, not less than three-fourths, of the cost of maintaining the school. The Presbyterians having obtained such a complete concession from the Board, it is no wonder that their schools were speedily brought into connection with the Board, and no wonder that other denominations pre- sently followed their example. The whole concession was gained by the denominations, together with the advantages of Government inspection, national main- tenance, and national prestige, on the easy condition of accepting the Conscience Clause, and inscribing ‘'National School’’ on their school-houses. The same designation might, with at least as much justice, be conceded to the existing denominational inspected schools of England — unless, indeed, the fact that the Government pays for schools is suf- ficient to constitute them “ National,” whoever may have the management. If so, the way to do aAvay with the denominational character of the 278 NATIONAL EDUCATION, English voluntary inspected schools would be for the Government to relieve the denominations of their cost, while the denominations retain the manage- ment. Before the Board capitulated to the Presbyterians in 1839, and by so doing gave definite recognition to the class of Non- Vested schools, the total number of National Schools was 1,384 ; it is now, as we have seen, 6,914. In 1838 a few convent and fraternity schools were almost all the schools not strictly Vested which were connected with^the Board; noA^r the vast majority are Non- Vested. In short, while the number of Vested schools in the last thirty years has only increased fifty per cent., the present number being, as we have said, 2,000, nearly 6,000 Non- Vested schools have been brought into connection with the Board. I am bound to add that the Presby- terians have made compensation for their zeal in preserving to the utmost extent possible the Pro- testant, the Presbyterian, the sectarian character of their own schools, by their keen and watchful jealousy to enforce, as far as possible, the non- sectarian principle of control and management in the case of Eoman Catholic schools, and especially by their anxiety to prevent the Government from alloAv- ing convent schools to carry out fully the principles which they had claimed to act upon in their o\yn Presbyterian schools. If the English principle noAv embodied in the Education Act were made the rule for Ireland, and strictly secular limitation were imposed on all the teaching during the recognised and ordinary hours, it would be a great relief to Irish agitation, or at least it ought to be. I do not need to say much about the Model Schools PRIMARY ED UCA TION IN IRELAND, 279 of Ireland. The first was established in connection with the Training Institution for Teachers in Dublin, and dates from the beginning of the system. In 1835 the Commissioners suggested in their Report the desirableness of establishing thirty-two Model Schools, one for every county in Ireland. But this has never been carried out. Even at the present time there are but twenty-seven, and it was not until 1849, that is, nearly twenty years after the beginning of the system, that any provincial Model Schools were opened. There is no doubt that these are excellent schools, although the want of local management is a serious disadvantage in some respects, hovrever ad- vantageous in others, and would of itself limit the multiplication of such schools. In these schools the pupil-teacher system is properly carried out ; they are excellently organized, and they embody the ideas of combined literary and moral and separate religious instruction, as the Board would like to have these applied in all the National Schools of Ireland. At first the Roman Catholic hierarchy were strongly in favour of the establishment of Model Schools on this plan. But for more than ten years past, since the influence of Paul Cullen rose to the ascendant in Ireland, they have bitterly denounced them. They now covet them, as Ultramontane establishments, in connection with which to train Roman Catholic teachers for such denominational schools as they would have established. I regret to say that in this, as in a number of other points, the '' Report of the Royal Commission’’ seems to incline far too much towards the Ultramontane demands. If the Commissioners would not concede all that Cardinal Cullen desires as to this particular. zSo NATIONAL EDUCATION, they would at all events abolish these noble school establishments. I have already intimated that there is much in the Irish system to admire. The Time-table Conscience Clause is an invaluable element in the system, and has, in effect, been transferred by means of Mr. Forster s Education Act to our English schools. It furnishes the best solution of the religious difficulty. AVhilst the English nation should utterly protest against any proposal to make the Irish system more denominational, it is not desirable, on the other hand, that it should be stripped and peeled down through all the ordinary school-hours to as barely secular a system of instruction as would seem to be required by the new Act in our English inspected schools. At the same time, to have a system of schools without local com- mittees, under the government, each one, of a patron, who is, besides, usually a priest or clergyman, and to give to such patrons an absolutely irresponsible control over the teachers — all this seems to call very loudly for redress and reformation. Assuredly, too, the fatal, and, I had almost said, disgraceful, concession to the Eoman Catholic Church, by which convent sisters and monastic brothers are, as such, accepted by the Board as qualified public teachers, without any Government examination or any trial whatever, ought, on every account, to be immediately repealed. I have shown that the existing system is virtually a denominational system, and yet Cardinal Cullen is persistent in his demands for what he calls a denomi- national system in Ireland ; and men, either for want of any real knowledge of what the Irish system is, or to secure the advantage of an ignorant and passionate party cry, are perpetually repeating the assertion that PRIMARY EDUCATION IN IRELAND, 281 either secularism must be established in England on the ruins of all denominational and all Christian voluntary schools, or else we shall be compelled to concede the Cardinars demands. These men speak of the Irish system as a secular and undenominational system. How absolutely contrary to fact all this is I have fully shown, and I have no more to say on that point. But to some it may perhaps seem strange that, if the existing system in Ireland is virtually denominational, the Koman Catholic prelates should desire to change a system so favourable to the deno- minations. But we must not forget that the policy of Ultramontanism is absolutely exclusive. Many Eoman Catholic children attend Protestant schools in Ulster ; in parts of the same province, and elsewhere, where there is a numerous Protestant minority among a Roman Catholic majority, Protestant children attend Roman Catholic schools, and are visited and catechized at the schools by their own ministers ; both these facts are unfavourable to the exclusive claims of the Ultramontane hierarchy. The National System, on the whole, tends to produce liberty of thought and liberality of feeling. A strictly and fully denomina- tional system, managed absolutely by the priesthood or the confraternities, would be immensely more congenial to the spirit and favourable to the waning power, but unabated claims, of Ultramontane Romanism. The denominational system of education which the Ultramontane party demand as their right is in entire antithesis to all the principles on which the State deals with denominational schools in this country ; is, indeed, essentially opposed to the principles of the late Privy Council Code as well as 202 NATIONAL EDUCATION, to the present New Code of the Department ; is as extreme in its Ultramontane arrogance and exclusive- ness as the worst system of education which the Pope and the Jesuits, by the most exacting of Con- cordats, ever imposed upon Austria in the days of her most servile and reactionary superstition ; and is such as is not conceded to Koine in any Roman Catholic country at the j)r^sent moment. The lower the Papacy falls in its fortunes, the smaller the real power of Roman Catholicism grows in Ireland, the louder, the larger, the more daring are the demands of Cardinal Cullen. There is a certain wisdom, no doubt, in the method. The unabashed aggressor who would in vain aj)peal to equity, and who knows better than to resort to actual force, will often try to carry his point by loud and persistent demands and threats. All parties in this country, except a few Ultra- montanes, whatever their politics and whatever their ecclesiastical denomination may be, are utterly and immovably opposed to the Irish Ultramontane demands. It is well that the leaders of the Bir- mingham agitation are opposed to these demands. But Mr. Forster occupies as firm and impregnable, and as thoroughly consistent a position, from which to refuse or oppose Cardinal Cullen, as it is possible for man to hold. Mr. Forster has disdenomination- alised the English voluntary schools to the utmost possible extent, noUvithstanding that the denomina- tional managers must still find, in fees and subscrip- tions (one or both), at least half the cost ; the Cardinal demands that the Irish National Schools shall be made denominational in the fullest and most absolute sense, although in many of them not a PRIM A RY ED UCA TION IN IRELAND, 2 8 3 farthing is contributed by the managers towards their cost, either in fees or in any other way, but the whole charge lies upon the State, and in the rest next to nothing is contributed. Mr. Forster has done away with denominational inspection here, and made the undenominational State inspection much more inde- pendent and searching than before. Cardinal Cullen demands that books, methods, teachers, and inspectors should be all and wholly ‘‘ Catholic,’’ and entirely under uncontrolled and unshared priestly direction. Mr. Forster has made a stringent conscience clause bind- ing upon all the inspected schools in this country ; Cardinal Cullen demands that in '' Catholic ” (not in Protestant) schools in Ireland the conscience clause shall be removed and done away with. Mr. Forster has only to carry out for Ireland the principles he has embodied in his Education Act for this country, has only to proffer the Cardinal our English denomina- tionalism, and the Cardinal will be effectually floored. Mr. Forster’s is, in fact, the only basis on which it is possible for an English statesman to settle the educational policy of England. This policy must be an Imperial policy. It must rest on the same funda- mental principles, whether it has to deal with educa- tion for England, or Ireland, or Scotland. The very argument, mistaken as it is in its assumptions, pressed by Mr. Dixon and Mr. Dale assumes this postulate. It implies that the same fundamental principle must govern in Ireland as well as in England. Let us, as we are bound, add Scotland to England and Ireland ; then what have we ? Secu- larism abhorrent to Ireland ; not less abhorrent to Scotland. Secularism cannot then be established for England. In Ireland the ordinary education of 284 NATIONAL EDUCATION. the National Schools is, in its common and central character, Christian, religious, although not in a de- nominational sense. In Scotland the common educa- tion is to he not only Christian and religious, hut positively dogmatic. The Westminster catechism is to he taught in the rate-huilt schools. In neither country is the school-teacher silenced as a Christian teacher ; in both he is expected to teach morality and religion. In the Scotch common school, as in the English Board school, the clergy, as such, have no authority or status whatever. In Ireland they give instruction in the schools at certain fixed times ; hut their instruction is not regarded as a part of the common, the statutory, the legally necessary, instruc- tion. In both Ireland and Scotland as much common religious instruction and infiuence is incorporated with the universal education as can be practically accom- plished. The existing English system is in harmony with this principle ; a secular system would be entirely opposed to it. CHAPTER YIL THE DEVELOPMENT OF POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. T HAVE already referred incidentally to the founda- tion of popular education in Scotland. In that country, as in the Protestant countries of the Con- tinent, the Reformation laid the basis of popular education firmly and deeply at least throughout the Lowlands. But the case of England is one which re- quires special study and explanation. It is, in fact, altogether peculiar, unlike that of any other country Avhatever. In this chapter, accordingly, I shall endea- vour clearly, although it must needs be slightly, to sketch the rise of jiopular education in England. No doubt it is true that w^hat England has had of popular education in the past was due almost wholly to the Reformation, so far as this took hold of England. But the Reformation in England never reached the ground of national society and life. The common peojole remained, for the most part, Roman Catholics ; of the landed gentry, not nearly one-half can be said to have received the new ideas ; only the mercantile classes, as a whole, embraced the Reforma- tion. It was not till after the defeat of the Spanish Armada that the more moderate among the Catholic 286 THE DEVELOPMENT OF knights and squires, 'Svlio were scattered over the shires, transformed themselves,” as Mr. Fronde says, '‘into Catholics with a difference, Anglo-Catholics or High Churchmen.” "That defeat,” to quote again from the same historian, " was the sermon which completed the conversion of the English nation, and transformed the Catholics into,” not Protestants, not explicit adher- ents of the Reformation, but "Anglicans,” i.e, mem- bers of the National and partially reformed Catholic Church, separated from the Pope, and acknowledging the supremacy of the English Sovereign. The sum is, that in England the Reformation never moulded, never remoulded, the national institutions, and effected comparatively little for national educa- tion. Many free grammar schools were founded, intended for the education of the poor. But the parish school and the parish teacher did not, as in Scotland under the institutions which the intellect of the great Scotch Reformer moulded, become a part of the ecclesiastical discipline of England, laying a basis of education level with the mass of the population. And the free grammar schools in the towns, being mere corporations, and in no way quickened or con- trolled by the running stream of intellectual progress or national life, presently became corruptly managed and worthless institutions. The nation remained without a school system. The peasantry remained in a serf-like condition ; they were bound to the soil by the law of settlement, they were endowed by the parish with the cold and miserable charity of a de- moralising poor-rate. Until far into the eighteenth century, manufactures occupied comparatively few hands ; and sometimes, as in Norwich, the condi- tion of the craftsman appears to have been almost POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 287 worse than that of the pr^edial labourer.'" With the exception of the skilled artisans, only the hand-loom cloth-weaver of the village or the small town, who not only owned his loom but held some land, seems to have been in a condition approaching to comfort and independence ; and these cloth- weavers, mostly of Dutch, Flemish, or Huguenot race, were Pro- testants and lovers of books, the progenitors of the Independents and Bajotists of modern times, who, in small congregations, maintain still a tenacious footing in the localities where those old Protestant work- people lived. The purely English, and especially the purely agricultural, peasantry never received into their souls the light and quickening of the Eeformation. It was not for them, as the style and matter agree to prove, that the great preachers, whether of the Anglo- Catholic or the Puritan school, elaborated their dis- courses, weighty with scholastic thought and brocaded with the learned splendour of classical and patristic quotation. The wants and capacity of the labourer seem to have been as remote from the purpose of the divine as his condition and claims from the care of the contemporary chronicler. Until the Methodists reached some — only some, only a few of them — they were left much where the Eeformation had found and left them. The last preachers who had reached their level, and taught them any lessons that went home and stayed by them, were the preach- ing friars, save here and there a Latimer in one ao-e and sphere, or a Bunyan in another, with a very few who had drunk into their spirit. Even to this day the peasantry of the South and West of England * Macaulay’s History of England, vol. i. pp. 416-417, 8vo edition. 288 THE DEVELOPMENT OF have not forgotten the teaching and preaching of the Mars. The lessons remain in not a few quaint and rude superstitions, half heathenish and half monkish, which retain their hold among our rural peasantr}\ They remain also in the evening devotions which to this day are taught by Wessex and Devonian peasant mothers to their children. The Kev. F. G. Lee, author of Directorium Anglicanum,’’ who is the modiste and posture-master of our modern Ultra-Eitualists, derives great satisfaction from the root of ancient monkish devotion which he finds among the peasantry. He speaks, in one of his poems,’’ of “ a golden- haired child, with large blue eyes, gathering violets fair,” and he gives us, in congenial doggerel, the child’s evening prayer “ * I put my hands together like this, "When I go to bed alone, And I always say what my mother taught,’ Then she said in monotone — (there is a characteristic touch from the master of tones, gestures, ceremonies, and vestments) — - ‘ Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed I lie upon ; Four corners to my bed. Four angels at my head ; One to sing and one to pray, And two to carry my soul away ; And if I die before I wake, I pray to God my soul to take, For Jesus Christ our Saviour’s sake. Amen.’ ” The child’s mother was dead, the lyrist tells us, and so adds : — ‘‘If one is gone Methought you have Aiother.” Meaning either the Virgin Mother, Mary, or the Holy POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 289 Cliurcli, it is hard to say which. The prayer, how- ever, is the point in view. It is, as Mr. Lee’s pro- duction truly implies, by no means yet obsolete. The Reformation, then, brought to the common country folk of England no new dispensation, no immediate enlightenment or elevation. They re- mained very much as they had been for some gene- rations. Some were dieted in coarsest j)lenty ; many were stinted to the hardest and leanest fare, and became in consequence a small and degenerate race ; all were too ignorant, depressed, and helpless to attempt any combination or make any effort for their elevation ; the whole class was beneath the notice of the contemporary annalist, and, if we must judge by published and extant sermons, even beneath the re- cognition of the educated joreacher. We hear much of the upper and middle classes ; Ave hear something of discontented handicraftsmen ; Ave read in statutes and chronicles of '' sturdy and valiant beggars,” of vagrants and thieves ; but of the peasantry of England Ave scarcely catch a glimpse or hear a sound from the time of Jack Cade doAAui to the last century. Such a class AA^as beneath education. Our modern educational movement, AAdiich has been sloAvly gathering poAver and taking form in this country noAv for almost a hundred years, is due to the general forces AAdiich haA^e come into operation since the beginning of the last century. Of these the Evangelical revival among the English Churches has been one, and one of the greatest. Another has been the A^ast and deep European tide of movement of AAdiich the fearful French ReAmlution Avas the most momentous result. Another has been the aQfsrreQfa- tion of people in large towns and thickly populated u 2go THE DEVELOPMENT OF districts, owing to tlie development of manufacturing industry. These causes together have forced the subject of education upon the public attention. Christian philanthropists took the work to heart long before statesmen acknowledged its importance. Wesley, Raikes, Bell, Lancaster, preceded Brougham and Birkbeck. In 1805 the excellent British and Foreign School Society took its rise; 1811 saw the foundation of the great National School Society of the Church of England. Since about the year 1780, Sunday-schools had been increasing and multiplying with wonderful rapidity. In 1815, or thereabouts, a noble young man began to acquire his first ex- perience as a teacher in Sunday-schools, who was destined to become the greatest benefactor to children this century has j)roduced — the greatest, as the first and most original master of the science and art of Christian training : I mean David Stow. For nearly half a century David Stow pursued his course, beginning in unostentatious privacy, ending in view of all the world. He was the means of revolution- ising the- methods of teaching, of developing the prin- ciples and science of training, of ascertaining and working out the process by which the mind and heart of a child might be most surely awakened and drawn forth into contact and communion with truth and sympathy, with intellectual and moral light and life. He was the founder and organizer of the Glasgow Training System and Training College, to which the education of this country and of the world owes so much. It was not till some time after the zeal of Christian philanthropists had begun to glow in the cause of religious education, that the needs and rights of the POPULAR ED UCA TION IN ENGLAND. 2 9 1 people, in regard to general education, began to make an impression on Parliament and the country at large. The same causes had not operated in this country as in the foremost countries of the Continent to lead statesmen to feel the necessity of making the reorga- nization and renovation of primary education a matter of immediate and paramount political concern and national legislation. The republican institutions and instincts of SA^dtzerland and Holland have made those countries the strongholds of popular education politi- cally organized ; in Switzerland low in its range, in Holland much more liberal, but in both countries clear, good, universally diffused. The French Revo- lution, springing out of the idea of republican equality, has also led in France to the eventual reorganization and the wide diffusion of public instruction. In Germany, the necessity felt for erecting a prostrate people and uniting a divided fatherland and race, in order to resist Napoleon, led Prussian statesmen sixty years ago to abolish serfdom and to revive and extend education. The immunity of England from revolutionary violence ; its security from foreign attack ; its isolation from the Continent, and its antagonism to France and French ideas ; the immense wealth and power of its aristocracy ; the serried strength and merely material culture of its middle classes ; and the absorption of the capital and energies of the most energetic and progressive classes of the people in manufactures and operative industry — have combined to seclude this nation from the educational progress which has marked the history of other European countries. Our political and politi- cally represented classes have been busy, have been making money, have had no taste for ideas, have 2Q2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF often had a positive dread of education for those beneath them, have not seldom associated the thought of education with the fear of revolution. For the last fifty years, however, things have been rapidly changing. The change has been registered in Parliamentary progress. The speeches of Brougham, and the Parliamentary inquiries of which he was the first great promoter, and of which there has been a long and frequent succession throughout a period of nearly sixty years ; the action of Parliament in giving to a Special Committee of the Privy Council wide and summary powers in regard to public education ; and, in particular, the Minutes of the Council issued respectively in the years 1839, 1846, and 1862 — have brought us to our present position. The names of Brougham, Lansdowne, Bussell, Shuttleworth, Pakington, Forster, with others of scarcely inferior distinction, are honourably inscribed in the Parlia- mentary annals of educational progress for this country. The action of Christian philanthropists and of Christian Churches in the matter of religious, and also in part of secular, education for the people pre- ceded, as I have shown, any interposition by the State in the matter of general education. The first national grant in aid of education was voted in 1833, on the motion, in the Commons’ House, of Lord A1 thorp. It amounted only to <£20,000. It was distributed by the Treasury for six years, and was appropriated only to the building of schools connected with the National School Society, or the British and Foreign School Society. In 1839, as I have said, the Committee of Council on Educa- tion was organized, and the beginning, in slight and POPULAR ED UCA TION IN ENGLAND. ^ 9 3 humble proportions, was made of a system which has now expanded to a large growth. In 1846 the general principles of the existing system of aid to denominational and British schools were put forth by the Council. But for fifty years before the earliest of these dates {i.e., before 1833) the tide of religious effort on behalf of Sunday-schools had set in, and for about a quarter of a century the British and Foreign and the National School Societies had been engaged, under the management of earnest Christian men, in diffusing a general education in which Christian principles constituted a fundamental element. After the State had begun to recognise the work of national education as a charge and duty belonging in part, at least, and in a very practical and important sense, to itself, it could not be but that the Churches and the State should be brought into relation with each other through their respective relations to the same common work. In fact, the State, in aiding the National Society, was directly aiding the Church of England in the work of education. It could not always be that other Churches would be excluded from receiving State help in return for their co-operation with the State in the matter of public education. It was inevitable that, starting as it did in this work so late, and after the Churches had so long been diligently engaged in it, and had accomplished so much that w^as permanently of inestimable value, in respect of methods of education and training no less than of schools founded and scholars gathered in, the State should, when it entered upon the field, recognise fully and liberally the rights which the Churches had at least acquired, if they did not originally possess, in the matter of national education. 294 - THE DEVELOPMENT OF It is important, moreover, to note the special ground on which the State did at length interpose on behalf of the education of the people. It was, primarily, on behalf of morality and society, on behalf of Christian civilisation, that the Government took action ; it was not for the sake of developing, by State legislation and action, by public outlay and national organization, the intellectual progress or the material resources of the nation. It was because, thirty years ago, all English statesmen saw clearly that, while the children of the English people were doubtless lamentably wanting in education generally, what they stood in need of first and most of all was distinctively Christian culture and influence, that these statesmen found themselves compelled to move Parliament to interpose in order to do whatever might be done towards reclaiming and elevating the oncom- ing generations of their countrymen. What was imperatively needed, what was needed before all else in the judgment of her Majesty and of her Majesty’s Ministers, for the children of the working people of England, was that their consciences should be awakened and enlightened, that their religious sen- sibilities should be kindled and developed, that what has been spoken of as a Christian consciousness should be formed within them. To a sad and very alarming extent the lower classes were found, on careful inquiry, to be sunk far below the level of anything like a Christian consciousness,” to be utterly barbarous and irreligious. Under these cir- cumstances it was felt that before all things it was necessary that religion should be applied, that Christianity should be brought home to the children of the people of England, so that by degrees the POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 295 genei’cations of this Protestant country might he imbued with something like a Christian character. This was not the conclusion of enthusiastic or one- ideacl Christian philanthropists, hut of statesmen, of all the statesmen of all parties. As to this particular there was no controversy, no variety of opinion, among the leading public men of English political parties thirty or forty years ago. It is not well to forget to-day the language used by Lord Russell, in 1839, in his famous ‘'Letter to the Marquis of Lansdowne,” conveying the Queen s judgment and wishes in regard to the work of national education. This letter, I may observe in passing, was in a sense the very charter of the Educa- tional Department of the Privy Council, since it was the medium through which her Majesty thought proper to make known her royal pleasure in reference to the constitution of a special and separate depart- ment for primary education in connection with the Privy Council, of which Council the Marquis of Lans- downe was at that time Lord President. Lord John Russell says that — “ Her Majesty has observed with deep concern the Avant of instruction which is still to be found among the poorer classes of her subjects. All the inquiries Avhich have been made,” he continues, “ shoAV a defi- ciency in the general education of the people, Avhich is not in accordance Avith the character of a civilised and Christian nation. The reports of the chaplains of gaols shoAv that, to a large number of unfortunate prisoners, a knowledge of the fundamental truths of natural and revealed religion has never been imparted.” Further on it is observed in the same letter that. 296 THE DEVELOPMENT OF in any normal or model school to be established by the Board, four principal objects are to be kept in view : first, religious instruction ; second, general instruction ; third, moral training ; fourth, habits of industry.” Again his lordship states, in memorable words, that ‘'it is her Majesty’s wish that the youth of her kingdom should be religiously brought up, and that the rights of conscience should be respected.’' His lordship also says that, “ by combining moral training with general instruction, the young may be saved from the temptation to crime, and the whole community receive indisputable benefits and, in the final words of his letter, he speaks of the plans in contemplation by the Government as “plans for the extension of the blessinof of a sound religious educa- tion.” I might fortify these quotations, if there were any necessity for it, by citing passage after passage from a remarkable pamphlet which was published in the same year, 1889, by Dr. James Phillips Kay, as he was then called, but who is now known by the title of Sir J. P. Kay-Shuttleworth. He was appointed the first Secretary of the Educational Department of the Committee of Privy Council ; and in that capacity he published a pamphlet which explained and defended the principles and the plans of the Government in regard to education. In this pamphlet he lays it down repeatedly, and most emphatically, that the intention of the Government was, by means of a sound education — moral, religious, and intellectual — to educate the whole man ; and especially by such means to reclaim the lower classes of our people from that condition of lawlessness, demoralisation, and degrada- tion in which multitudes of them were at that time sunk. He explains that it was the intention of the POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 297 Government by these means to infuse humanising and Christian influences into the midst of the lower fabric of society, in order that we might no longer have to blush because of the prevalence within this country of a low state of morals and manners, such as was a disgrace to the name of Christianity. It was, then, upon these principles that the Education Department of the Privy Council was, in the first instance, constituted. It was under the influence of such views and prin- ciples that Lord Melbourne’s administration, in 1839, made the first serious and worthy attempt, by means of national legislation, to deal with the question of national education for England. The Government proposed, in fact, to adapt to the case of England the leading principles of the great measure of national education wdiich had, a few years before, been carried into operation in Ireland. But that which was the best, if only because it was the only, system which could be carried out in Ireland five-and-thirty years ago, met with a decisive opjDosition from a large majority of the earnest and orthodox Protestants of England. In fact, the number and variety of deno- minations in this country, and the amount of passive nominally Protestant ignorance and irreligion among the lower classes of English people, made the problem of education then, as now, quite different for the two countries, and the project of united education, although, at first sight, it might have appeared s easier, in reality more difficult for this country than for that. The Government went to work like states- men. They did not propose to reform the morals and manners of masses of ignorant and irreligious people merely by means of secular instruction ; nor 2g8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF did they propose to cover the country with schools, and enact a direct compulsory law of education, before they had made provision for training an ade- quate supply of competent teachers. They proposed to found, in the first instance, a normal college, with its model school. It was with them a first principle, that the religious instruction of the candidate teachers should form an essential and prominent ele- ment of their studies,’’ and that no certificate should be granted unless the authorised religious teacher had previously attested his confidence in the character, religious knowledge, and zeal of the candidates whose religious instruction he had superintended.” To impart the requisite religious instruction to the can- didate teachers, i.e., the students in the college, a clergyman of the Established Church was to have been appointed chaplain, to act under the general direction of the rector, who was to have been a lay- man, and who would have been at the head of the whole institution, including both training college and model school. But to meet the case of candidate teachers who might be Nonconformists, whether Pro- testant or Roman Catholic, besides the chaplain, '' the licensed minister ” of any such candidates, if a wish to that effect were expressed, was to have authority to attend at stated times, in order ‘‘ to assist and examine the candidates in their religious reading, and to afford them spiritual advice.” In the model school, religious instruction was to have been regarded ‘‘ as general and special general, inasmuch as, to quote the words of the minute, religion was to be combined with the whole matter of instruction, and to regulate the entire system of discipline and special, inasmuch as ‘‘ periods ” were to be ‘‘ set apart POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 2gg for such peculiar doctrinal instruction as might be required for the religious training of the children.” The chaplain was ‘‘ to conduct the religious instruc- tion of children whose parents or guardians belonged to the Established Church,” while licensed minis- ters ” were to give special religious instruction to the children of Nonconformists when the number of such children ajopeared to the school committee to be so large as to require this provision to be made. The Scriptures Avere to be read in the schools ; and, to meet the case of Roman Catholic scholars, it was felt needful to allow, in their special instance, the use of the Roman Catholic version. Such was, in outline, the famous scheme of 1839. I do not hesitate to say that it was honestly and patriotically intended ; that it was both religious and liberal in its spirit ; and that it was, in its concep- tion, worthy of Christian statesmen. Nevertheless, it had a fatal fault — it was impracticable. Such a scheme furnished no solvent by which the denomina- tions could be held together in pellucid tranquillity within the same institution. In Ireland, where, thirty years ago, three different denominations Avould have comprised all the children in nearly all the schools, the elements which it was hoped to hold together in peaceful neighbourship and diffused neutrality, have, in a large majority of cases, sepa- rated from each other and crystallized apart. The Irish system, as we have seen, has long been a pre- dominantly denominational system. In England the proposed system was even more impracticable. The Government proposals evoked a tempestuous opposition. The Church of England opposed them with all its forces. The Wesleyan Methodists were 300 THE DEVELOPMENT OF scarcely less vehement or resolute in their opposition. The scheme was opposed, not only as impracticable, but as favouring Popery, and, at the same time, as tending to produce a dangerous spirit of scepticism and unbelief’’ The Government proposals, I need scarcely add, were withdrawn. The Whigs having made their attempt, and failed, it was the turn next of the Conservative party to try their hand on a settlement of the great question of popular education. The Whigs had encountered the opposition of Churchmen and Conservative Christian educationists generally, the Conservatives were to call forth the indignant antagonism of all English Nonconformists, the Wesleyan Methodists included. I need not spend any time in describing the famous proposals of 1843, which Sir James Graham spoke of as his '' olive branch,” but which, erring from a despotic simplicity, and not, like those of Lord Melbourne’s Administration, from too great a compli- cation, would have handed over the primary educa- tion of the country to the Anglican clergy. Powerful as the Government was, and supported by the clergy and large majorities in both Houses of Parliament, they were obliged to give way before the storm which broke forth from every quarter of Nonconformity, and which, growing more terrible every day, threatened to sweep all before it. Twice foiled in its endeavours to secure for the generations of English children an effective Christian education. Parliament was yet constrained to renew the attempt. It was impossible, in view of the actual condition of England in the period 1841-1846, to let this question rest. General uneasiness and discontent among the working people of England, POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 301 especially in the northern provinces ; Chartist organi- zation and conspiracies ; growing excesses of social vice and profligacy ; the revelations and recommend- ations of Committees and Commissions ; the urgency of the benevolent, the fears of the grave and thought- ful ; — all concurred to impress upon each Govern- ment in succession that, in some way, practically at least if not with an ideal consistency, approximately if not completely, the problem of national education must be solved. No other way seemed now to be left but for the State to Avork in partnership with the denominations. The barely secular plan, it is true, had not been tried. But thirty years ago England had not yet found, nor indeed has it found even to-day, any responsible statesman, any adviser of the Sovereign, who would propose for the nation a bare plan of secular educa- tion. I have referred to a pamphlet by Sir J. P. Kay- ShuttleAvorth, Avhich v^as published in 1839, to pre- pare the Avay for the Government action of that period. In 1846, the same gentleman published a second official pamphlet, to prepare the way for the Government action Avhich was actually taken in that year. In this pamphlet he explains the views Avhich up to this period had been held by English states- men as to popular education. It is worth while to quote from that pamphlet one or two significant and suggestive passages : — It Avas scarcely believed then ” — that is, in 1839 — says Sir J. P. Kay-ShuttleAvorth, writing in 1846 on behalf of the Government, and in exposition of the principles of the neAV Government plan, ‘'that it could enter into the conception of statesmen to re- 302 THE DEVELOPMENT OF gard religion as a primary and indispensable part of education. They (the majority of the clergy and laity) imagined that the statesmen of this country relied solely on the cultivation of the intellect, and on the spread of secular knowledge, for the growth of a higher morality, and for the promotion of the j)ublic order and well-being of society ; and, while they justly repudiated the gross and mischievous error that a purely secular knowledge was capable of establishing society on an immutable basis of social order, or was even necessarily connected with a high condition of public morality, it is to be apprehended that they had fallen into the opposite fallacy, and were not convinced how imjoortant it was to raise the intellectual condition of the people for the purj)ose of promoting the growth of true religion.’’ The same authority further says : — The Government had never wavered in its adherence to the principle adopted in 1839, that ' religion should be mixed with the entire matter of instruction in the school, and regulate the whole of its discipline ; ’ and the perseverance of successive Governments in the adoption of the principle that religion is the foundation on which education must be built, has vindicated statesmen from the suspicion to which we have previously alluded, that they valued education chiefly because of their confidence in the influence of purely secular learning. In 1846, accordingly, the secular principle of national education was quite out of the question for this country. Indeed, at that time there was no precedent in the history of the world for a secular scheme of national education, except the abortive paper schemes of the French Revolution, which had POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 303 brought forth no fruit whatever, but the destruction of the only people’s schools in France. Such being the case, there remained now, , as I have said, no possible way left for the State to contribute its part towards satisfying the crying needs of the country, except by co-operating with the denominations, which had already done so much in the way of providing schools, which, indeed, had, between them, already covered much the larger part of the ground with school provision. The Conservative Government had tried the jDiinciple of State co-operation with the State Church alone in order to do the needful Avork. The country had rejected that principle. The Whigs, a few years earlier, had attempted to apply to England the principles of unsectarian and mixed national provision of education, as in Ireland. But the country Avould not hear of that. The secular plan was altogether out of the question. Except partnership all the denominations, what possible plan remained ? It has been seen that, on the Con- tinent, the experience of France and Germany had compelled the different States to accept the con- clusion that public elementary education could only be secured and regulated by the State in conjunction with the different Churches. But, as I have before shoAvn, the problem was simpler and easier for Con- tinental States than for England, because there, beside the two or three State-suj)ported Churches in each country, there were no other denominations of any material importance. The Dissenters of the Continent are few and feeble. Whereas in this country there is but one Established Church, and the various Dissenting and Nonconformist sects include nearly half the population, and are equally spirited 304 THE DEVELOPMENT OF and powerful. No State arrangement as to educa- tion, accordingly, could be effected, v/liich did not place the Nonconformist Churches on something like an equal footing, as to co-operation, with the Church by law established. The difficulties in the way of any direct or com- prehensive legislation on the subject were indeed at that time insuj)erably great ; but a series of experi- ments, under the direction of the Privy Council Executive for the time being — the Educational Committee of the Privy Council — was organized in 1846 (some beginning indeed, as we have seen, had been made in 1839), and having been carried on for five-and-twenty years, prepared the way for the legis- lation of 1870. Parliament sanctioned, year by year, the grant proposed, as an item of the Estimates, and sanctioned also, by simply voting the money, or by raising no objection, or refusing to ratify an objection raised, the rules and regulations for the administration of the grants which, from time to time, were issued by the Department, having, in regard to imjDortant points, been previously laid on the table of the House. But no measure was proposed ; and no large principles were discussed. In the case, indeed, of the proposal by the Department to introduce the principle of the Irish National System, the country and Parliament were roused to object to the method in Avhich the Government proposed to apply the grant, as more than twenty years later the school interest of the country was aroused to op|)ose Mr. Lowe’s proposals in the way of revising the then existing code of regulations. But, as a rule, the Executive was left to spend and regulate at discretion, objection being only taken from time to time to the POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 305 growing amount of the grant. Thus, by a tentative and experimental process, was the public school system of this country moulded, until a few years ago the time was ripe for a comprehensive national system. The foundations of this system had been laid by the thirty years’ administration of the Privy Council Department, and national experience had been gathered of the very highest value. The Privy Council pilot-engine prepared the way for the legis- lative train of 1870. The Council had already, also, for the most of the way, laid down the road. The epochs of our public elementary school history are 1833, 1839, 1846, 1862, 1870. In 1833, as we have seen, small special grants were first voted by Parliament in aid of the National and the British and Foreign School Societies. In 1839 the Privy Council Department for Education was organized, and the Parliamentary grant was enlarged. The Government plan for introducing a national mixed and unsectarian system of education was defeated, but grants began to be made by Government direct to schools in England, and soon afterwards in Scotland, which were organized on a certain basis (either Church of England or Protestant unsectarian,'"' or, in Scotland, orthodox Presbyterian), and which placed themselves undej Government inspection ; and thus the all-im- portant matter of Government inspection began to be organized. In 1846 the famous Minutes of Council were published, which laid the foundation of the English public elementary school system. In accordance with these new regulations, large and liberal grants were to be made to aid in erecting, and annual grants to help in maintaining. Normal or * Schools of the British and Foreign School Society. X 3o6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF Training Colleges ; liberal building grants also were offered towards the erection of new schools, and annual grants to aid in their maintenance. The annual grants to schools consisted of an augmenta- tion grant to the teacher, as trained and certificated for public service, and grants for the instruction of pupil-teachers — suspended on the condition that the schools should be under Government inspection, and that pupil-teachers should be employed in them in certain proportions. In 1862 Mr. Lowe introduced his Revised Code, antagonistic in certain respects to the Minutes of 1846, but which, whatever its demerits, introduced into the administration of the Depart- ment the convenient principle of payment by results,’’ a fruitful principle in its after applications. Government inspection, trained and certificated teachers, the pupil-teacher system, and payment by results — these are now the great features of the English system of public elementary day-schools. All these features, except the last — for which in his official term as Secretary the time was not ripe — were the fruits of the sagacity and earnest purpose of the first Secretary for Education of the Privy Council, Sir J. P. Kay-Shuttleworth. He had retired many years from office, in broken health, when, in the time of his successor, Mr. Lingen, and under the vice-presidency of Mr. Lowe, the Revised Code of 1862 was introduced. For ten years (1839-1849) he had held office, and this country owes no common debt to him. On the Continent Government action takes a deno- minational form, and adapts itself explicitly to deno- ininational requirements. In this country no union between the Government and the Churches could be POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 307 arranged on sucli a basis. The Churches needed to maintain their entire separateness from the Govern- ment in the management of their schools. Certain conditions they would gladly fulfil, for the sake of Government inspection and aid ; they would observe certain rules in the organization of their school. But their committees must be exclusively Church Committees, and in no sense must any of their mem- bers or agents be State officials. Their ordinary management must go on as if there were no Govern- ment or Government officials in existence, save only that they were to be financially benefited and aided by Government, and were prepared to give all respect to the suggestions of Government or Government inspectors with a view to the in- creased efficiency of their schools. It was on such terms that the State in 1846 entered into partnership with the denominations for the education of the people. There was, however, as at that date there could hardly but have been, a difference in the manner in which the Government dealt with Church of England schools and with Nonconformist schools respectively as regarded religious instruction. The inspectors of the schools of the Church of England were all clergy- men of that Church, and were required to examine or inspect, at their annual visit, the religious as well as the secular instruction. The inspectors of other schools were all laymen, and had no power or liberty to take any cognisance of religious instruction. Go- vernment, however, made no grants to any schools which were not organized on a religious basis. True to the influences under which the State first under- took to interfere in regard to national education, con- vinced that nothing but a Christian education would 3o8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF meet the requirements of the country, Government would extend no aid to any schools which were not organized on a religious basis. In all schools, except Eoman Catholic schools, instruction in the Holy Scriptures was an indispensable condition. Eoman Catholic schools were not provided for under the original Minutes of 1846, but were included in the general arrangement two or three years later. In all schools, except those of the Church of England, the certificate of the managers that they were satisfied with the state of the religious knowledge in the school was accepted instead of any examination. It was a defect in the administration of the Department during this period, that no provision was made for an individual examination and appraising of the attainments of each particular child, and that no part of the Government grant was made to depend on the results of this examination. This, however, was not the fault of Sir J. P. Kay-Shuttleworth. In 1853 he drew up and urged the adoption of a Minute to this effect, but the Committee of the Council did not see their way to its adoption. From 1846 he had had such an arrangement in view. Perhaps it might not have been wise to press this at a very early period. The effect of these Minutes was immense. They brought more than a million of children into inspected Government schools in fifteen years, and led to the erection of forty training colleges. The system was doubtless one of artificial stimulation, not de- stined, not expected, to endure for many years without modification, but wisely generous in its con- * The number present at inspection in 1862 was in Great Britain upwards of a million. POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 309 ception and in all its provisions. Only a treatment of the case by means of generous stimulants could have produced any adequate effect in improving, extending, and efficiently applying the national provision of elementary education in England. Certainly neither Sir J. P. Kay-Shuttleworth nor the friends of public education generally, nor, so far as appears, any other party in the country, anti- cipated that the principles of the scheme of 1846 would be interfered with so soon, or so rudely, as they were by Mr. Lowe’s Kevised Code of 1862. To understand the principles on which Mr. Lowe pro- ceeded in the revolution which he attempted, but was only able in part to effect, we must regard the Revised Code as it was when he first introduced it. It proceeded on two principles : one was that public education ought to be paid for out of State funds only on the principle of pauper relief ; the other was that whatever was paid for, in other than confessedly pauper schools, ought to be paid for only as secular instruction, and on the basis, and accord- ing to the amount, of strictly tested and ascertained secular results” of instruction. Payment as poor relief ; payment according to rigidly ascertained results of secular instruction — these were the prin- ciples of his '"Revised Code;” both in themselves scientific and statesmanlike principles, but the first of the two utterly inapplicable in the existing condi- tion of England as to popular education, especially elementary education, and the second premature, if strictly applied. In accordance with the first of these two principles, the Revised Code proposed to deal out the dole of elementary education to the people 310 THE DEVELOPMENT OF as the Poor-law would proceed in the case of administering assistance to the indigent. In quantity it was to be a minimum, and it was to be of the plainest quality — rigidly restricted to what was deemed necessary for poor labouring people ; no grant for results was to be made in respect of any child who had either reached the upper age of eleven, or was too young an '' infant to pass the annual examination before the inspector, for infant-school training for poor men s children was a sentimental luxury, and before the age of eleven all poor men’s children ought be away from school and to be at labour ; and none but labouring people were to be allowed to send their children to the schools. Carrying out, as far as he dared, the same general principle, the Vice- President proposed to do away with the second 5mar of training for students at Normal Colleges, and to reduce the Training College Syllabus of instruction to a low and narrow utilitarian standard, such as, no doubt, he regarded as more than sufficient for teachers whose business it was to be to teach such schools as he meant the public elementary schools to be. I have already intimated that a just principle lay at the basis of Mr. Lowe’s proposals, but that it was altogether inapplicable to the existing condition of English society. England was in the condition which Mr. Mill describes as exceptional, ‘‘ when society in general is in so backward a state that it could not or would not provide for itself” (apart from the action of the State) ‘"any proper institutions of education.” ‘‘ As the less of two evils,” Govern- ment was, for the present — as it will be doubtless for a considerable period yet in the future — obliged POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 31 1 to interfere directly in the promotion and aid of '' institutions of education.’' Apart from the measures which the State had taken, there would have been scarcely any really efficient elementary schools in the country ; even after what Government had done during fifteen years, the number of really efficient schools was still far below the needs of the country ; it was not only that there was a deficiency of such schools for the poor, there was an equal deficiency of competent elementary schools for all classes, and, in fact, the new inspected schools, intended primarily for the poor, were now seen to be the only schools in the country where tradespeople could, for the most part, expect to get an honest and real elernentary education for their children ; besides all which, even if there had been a larger number of private elementary schools of a genuine and honest character, such was the ignorance of parents generally as to what constituted a real education, that they were quite unable to distinguish the real teacher from the mischievous pretender. Under such educational conditions as these, affecting the whole country, Mr. Lowe’s Revised Code was ridiculously inapplicable, and threatened wide and serious mischief to the edu- cation of the people. The Revised Code further interfered with the existing arrangements as to pupil-teachers, greatly diminishing their number, diminishing also the amount of grant on their behalf, and loosening the dependence of the pupil - teacher on the chief teacher. It required, also, that all the children in the schools should be grouped and classified for instruc- tion and examination according to age — a regulation 312 THE DEVELOPMENT OF wliicli showed a sublime forgetfulness of existing facts as to child life and school conditions. The capitation grant, that is, a grant per head on the number of children who had attended a certain number of times, had been introduced into the Code nearly ten years before, and was always extremely objectionable in principle, because it made the amount of grant earned by the teacher to depend on the accuracy of his own registers of the attendance of the children, the addition of but a single attendance, in some cases, making a claim to a grant for the year on behalf of a scholar who otherwise would earn no grant for the school. But the Revised Code would have indefinitely increased the demoralising induce- ment or temptation involved in the possibility of getting a grant by making a few attendances more than were actually registered in the first instance for it proposed to make the whole Government grant to any school dependent on the number of the children’s attendances over one hundred times, at the rate of one penny per head per school attendance, whether morn- ing or afternoon, the grant for each child being reduci- ble by one-third in case of failure on examination either in writing, or reading, or arithmetic, severally, and by two-thirds in the case of failure in two of these, and being wholly forfeited if the examination proved a failure in all the three. A capitation grant con- ditioned, at least in part, on attendance, has, in one form or other, continued ever since to be the principle of all payments made by the Education Department to inspected schools. Mr. Lowe was obliged, however, so far to modify his proposal as to make part of the grant dependent on the average * A dot marks an attendance on the register. POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 313 attendance of the school. But the whole grant has, since 1862, depended, as at any rate one of the condi- tions, on registration of attendances by the teacher. This demoralising feature in our English system ought to be got rid of at all hazards. The results of examination should, I venture to think, be taken, irrespective of the attendances of the children examined ; and the average number in attendance should be calculated, as it might be with sufficient accuracy, upon the basis of the ratio between the amount of fees paid in by the teacher weekly on account of each department of the school and the fee charged for each child. We have just seen that the modicum of instruction on which examination was to be made and payment to be obtained per child who passed was the barest mini- mum possible ; that, in fact, it only included reading, writing, and arithmetic. It took no account, among its secular results to be paid for by grants, of geo- graphy, or grammar, or history 1 These subjects were afterwards, in the course of some years, brought in as extra subjects, and made paying subjects by special minutes of the Privy Council. Of course everything in the nature of elementary art and science — of which not a little had been in- cluded in Sir James P. Kay-Shuttlew^orth’s ori- ginal plan — was excluded by Mr. Lowe’s revision. It has been the business of the Science and Art Department, working collaterally and independently, though in friendly relations, to bring forward such subjects as much as possible, during some years past, by special provisions and pecuniary inducements of which advantage can be taken in all elementary schools. Thus during the last eight or ten years the THE DEVELOPMENT OF 314 rigid exclusiveness and studious narrowness of Mr. Lowe's Eevised Code has been corrected. Several of the proposals of the Eevised Code were abandoned or modified at the time because of the pressure of public opinion. The grotesque and cruel proposal to make grants to infant schools entirely dependent on examination in the three E’s/' and also the proposal to reduce the term of college train- ing for teachers to one year, had to be abandoned. So, also, the Vice-President was obliged to abandon the idea of classifying and grouping, by force of law, at the examinations, all the children according to age. Even at this moment Government finds itself obliged from year to year to push forward the date at which a similar requirement is to be acted upon, notwithstanding twelve intervening years of educational progress, and the present pressure of compulsion. Perhaps in three or four years from the present time the idea may be carried out. Any practical educationist could not but have known that only in a completely educated nation, a nation in which a broad, pervasive, penetrating, thorough- going system had been in operation for years, could such an idea be carried into effect. Such a plan has not been fully carried out even in Germany ; in Eng- land, in 1862 , it was a demand at least fifteen years in advance of the times. The best idea in Mr. Lowe's revision was, perhaps, that of Government payment for strictly and exclu- sively secular results, an idea which seems to have been first suggested by Mr. Miall in his Eeport as one of the sub-commissioners under the Duke of Newcastle's Commission. But even this was a premature proposal, and operated most unfairly for years. On the POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 315 original plan of 1846-7, indeed, whatever money was granted by Government was granted directly for literary results and attainments, whether as an augmen- tation’’ to the teacher’s salary on account of his certificate or as dependent on certain conditions of educational provision, such as the presence of an adequate staff of pupil-teachers, with properly built, appointed, and regulated class-rooms ; and there was no strictly denominational condition or limitation, nor any doctrinal or definitely religious condition or limitation whatever, connected with these grants, the only absolute requirement of a moral or religious nature being that the school should either be in con- nection with a Christian Church, or that the Scrip- tures. should be read in it. But there was this difference in the working of the. two plans — the plan of 1846 and that of 1862. The original plan of 1846 went upon the generous assumption that where there was adequate attainment and training on the part of the teacher, and where he was properly assisted by an adequate staff, and properly placed in premises fitly constructed and furnished, there would not fail, on the whole — on an average — to be the educational results, moral and intellectual, which were desired. And it recognised distinctly the fact that the results sought for were not simply intellectual. Whereas the Revised Code made the State contri- bution to the school to be in a direct and simple proportion to the ‘"secular” results merely, these results themselves being of the lowest and narrowest sort, merely reading, writing, and arithmetic. It treated all besides, whether in the way of moral influence or of information and instruction, as mere surplusage. It ignored the fact that large masses of 3i6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF the children needed most and first of all to receive such civilising Christian culture as relates to the temper, the affections, the moral conceptions and habits ; it ignored also the equally important fact, as respected such children, that they were mostly so rude and rugged, so ill-nurtured as well as ignorant, so barbarous in speech and thought and feeling, that a difficult and tedious preliminary work of training needed to be done upon them before they could be brought to the same level with others, to the proper starting-point from which children living in civilised homes would begin the course of elementary education. It neglected, also, to take account that these same classes of children were almost always exceedingly irregular in their attendance, so that a world of pains taken with them, during their fitful school-going, would often seem for a long time to produce scarcely any result in the way of ordinary school learning. Those, in short, who had to do the hardest, most needful, and most meritorious work, as child-trainers and rudi- mentary educators, were, by the Revised Code, placed at an insurmountable disadvantage as compared with others. A heavy fine was imposed on anything like missionary and philanthropic enterprise and service on the part of teachers. Those could not fail to make by far the most money who had to teach the well- disposed and fairly civilised children of the working classes in the larger towns, especially in the South and South Midland districts of England, where such rugged independence of style and manners, such ignorance of all conventional proprieties, as are common in many parts of the North of England, are unknown, and where the people, unlike the men of POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 317 the Northern country parts, grow up from their child- hood to speak, not a broad and stiff provincial dia- lect, but the customary and flexible speech proper to school education and public reading. No doubt it was right that there should be an individual examination of every scholar, and that some portion of the grant, enough to constitute a sensible inducement to individual painstaking, should be made dependent on the results of the examination. But to make the whole grant de- pendent on the bare results of mechanical instruc- tion in the lowest rudiments of knowledge was not the way to elevate the teacher s ideal, to encourage the true spirit of training, or to secure what the country most needed. The Eevised Code did much to infuse a low and mercenary spirit into the body of school teachers. It was wise to extricate the Govern- ment grant distinctly and evidently from all direct relation to any other than properly educational con- ditions and results, apart from any religious consider- ations whatever ; it would have been right to consti- tute a direct and simple proportion between the Government payment and such school conditions, on the one hand, or such ascertained educational results, on the other hand, as were merely literary or intel- lectual, so that the Government payment might vary as these conditions or results varied. But, consider- ing the very widely contrasted conditions and cir- cumstances of children in different localities and different social or operative classes. Government aid should not, at that period, have been made to depend on mere examination results, nor should such results have been limited to the three bare elements which alone were recognised in the Code. THE DEVELOPMENT OF 318 In the original printed draft of the Eevised Code the grant to the school was reduced, as I have stated, to one amount, calculated at the rate of one penny for each attendance, morning or afternoon, of the scholar after one hundred times, reducible, how- ever, by one-third for a failure in each or either of the three rudimentary subjects. Consequently, no teacher would receive anything for any child who had not been one hundred times at school — a most unfair condition, especially in the worst and lowest populations, where the work of the teacher could not but be the hardest and, if faithful, the most meritorious ; but where no amount of ability or devotion would be able to secure general regularity of attendance, or to prevent many children from shifting their quarters, with their parents, before they had attended, in the same year, one hundred meetings of the school. And whatever any teacher did get was to have been solely and entirely dependent on the rudimentary examinations in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Mr. Lowe was compelled, on this point, to make a very large concession. His Code, as finally modified and sanctioned, provided for two grants ; one merely on average attendance, and the other on the results of the examination of those scholars who had attended two hundred meetings of the school. The grant to infant-schools was made liberal, and calculable on attendance only, for all children under six years of age. Such is a general view of the famous Eevised Code. Even after, in concession to the strong remonstrances of educationists, it had been greatly modified — made much milder, much less illiberal — POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 319 it still remained a memorial of doctrinaire economy of a hard, utilitarian type, such as knew nothing of generous wisdom, and little of concession to circum- stances, in order to raise the population into better circumstances. Judicious liberality and bounty, at certain stages, may lead, and may be the only way leading, to economy and independence afterwards. This, however, was a doctrine which the framers of the Revised Code did not seem to have learnt. Many further modifications have since been intro- duced in the Privy Council regulations, and now a New Code has followed the Revised Code. By degrees the Syllabus of Training College study has been brought back almost to the high standard adopted in the first years of Privy Council adminis- tration. So also the standard of school instruction has been enlarged and elevated, by annexing special pecuniary inducements to the teaching of certain extra subjects. But the aims and standard of the elementary teacher's work had been deeply lowered ; the character of the class doubtless suffered greatly in consequence ; the pupil-teacher supply was arrested for years. In fact, the profession could scarcely be said to have fairly recovered its position when the controversies which ushered in the Act of 1870 came to unsettle all feeling upon the subject, fol- lowed by the Act itself, which has now reorganized the whole of our national education on a broad and comprehensive basis. In 1870, when the preliminary and tentative dis- pensation came to an end, and popular education in England was first organized by Act of Parliament, the number of scholars under instruction in inspected schools in England and Wales was 1,438,872, with 320 THE DEVELOPMENT OF an average attendance of 1,153,572. The number in uninspected public schools was 088,555 ; and in private schools, high and low, as far as can be estimated, very nearly 1,000,000. The number of pauper children between five and thirteen was 164,873. The number left altogether without any pretence of school education could not fairly be reckoned at more than 400,000. But of those whose names were on the registers of even the inspected schools a large proportion attended so irregularly as to receive really nothing that could be called education, and to leave with but the slightest tincture of letters, while in the uninspected schools a much larger proportion were left virtually un- educated.* In fact, to unprejudiced and well-informed persons, it had been evident for many years before the Privy Council dispensation of aid to voluntary schools was replaced by the present wider system, that that system alone, notwithstanding the vast and excellent results which it had produced, could not but fall short in one important respect. It could not reach the neediest spots. Where the poor were poorest and most alone and unaided in their poverty, where ignorance and degradation were the worst and the most neglected, the most deprived of neighbourly power or will to elevate or help, there the aided voluntary system was often powerless. Neither, ^ of course, could voluntary zeal and benevolence, how- ever great, avail to constrain negligent parents to send their children regularly to school, or to compel insensible parents to send at all to school the children who were growing up utterly undisciplined and un- * See NoteJ at tlie end of this chapter . POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, 32 taught. As things were, accordingly, many spots were likely to remain without schools which sorely needed them, and the children who professed to go to school were likely many of them to grow up scarcely the least better for their schooling. Some method of effectual compulsion, it was abundantly evident, was necessary to make any provision, how- ever excellent, of schools and teachers really opera- tive in abiding educational results. As yet, in a word, the most truly destitute places had not been touched ; the children of the lowest strata had not been reached ; the selfishness of parents still remained the great obstacle in the way of the education of the children ; the landowners, farmers, and manufacturers, most bound to contribute to the work of educating their people, often contributed little or nothing ; the resources of voluntaryism had been taxed, in certain directions, until they could hardly be expected to yield much more. Much had been done ; a foun- dation had been laid for' nearly all that needed to be accomplished ; but the great majority of the working classes were still growing up uneducated. There was one really objectionable feature in the Privy Council system during all its tentative and preliminary stage with which Mr. Lowe in 1862 was too prudent to meddle. I refer to the principle of denominational inspection. At first this was a necessary concession to religious differences and jealousies. But it was, notwithstanding, in itself every way objectionable. It was a great waste of labour, sending an inspector driving across the country to find, often at considerable distances from each other, scattered British schools, Wesleyan schools, Ptoman Catholic schools. The Wesleyan denomina- Y 322 THE DEVELOPMENT OF tion, to do them justice, never asked for, they indeed declined to have appointed, a denominational inspector of their own colour. But Church of England inspectors were all Anglican clergymen, British and Wesleyan inspectors were all laymen, Eoman Catholic inspectors were Eoman Catholics. This was, as I have said, waste of labour ; but it was also an administrative recognition, and a public emphasising, of the fact that denominational fears and distrusts asserted themselves even in secular examinations of schools and school children. So long, how^ever, as the Government inspector in public elementary schools of the Church of England examined in religious knowledge it was inevitable that this system should continue. Only clergymen could so examine in Church of England schools, and the exclusive employment of clergymen as inspectors in such schools made it inevitable that other classes of schools should be visited by special and separate inspectors. For some years before 1870 there had been suggestions from various quarters that denomi- national inspection ought to be done away, and all schools, of whatever denomination, put together into districts defined purely by geographical considerations, and visited in each district by the same district inspector, without any more regard to his denomina- tion than to that of the various schools. This feature of the Privy Council system was done away by the Act of 1870. Some other features of our English system there are Avhich bid fair to be permanent, and which col- lectively give a special character to our national system of elementary schools. To a description of these features I shall give the next short chapter. POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 323 Note, p. 320 . The grounds of the statement made in the text are exhibited in the following extract from an article on “ Denominational and National Education,” which I contributed to the London Quarterly Review (Elliot Stock), for January, 1870. “ Lord Eobert Montagu, at Manchester, brought forward carefully prepared official statistics to prove that there are not more than 333,000 children in England who are not sent to school.* From the statistics which we print at the foot of this page,f and which have been drawn up from official sources by the Eev. G. W. Olver, the Secretary of the Wesleyan Education Committee, it would appear * This really valuable address has been since published by Messrs. Longman and Co., under the title, “ What is Education ? ” — See p. 13. t Population of England and Wales, 1868 — estimate corrected 21,732,866 Children between 5 and 13 — 1 in 6’21 .... 3,499,656 In 1858 — 321,768 were receiving Superior Education Same proportion, 1868 .... 858,000 Children on Eegisters of Inspected and Aided Schools 1,438,872 (Average attendance of Evening Scholars 1,702,744 not included above — 55,154) Children to be accounted for . . 1,671,600 In Schools under Simple Inspection . 35,987 In Poor Law Board — Union and Dis- trict Schools .... 39,850 In Unaided Schools under Government Inspectors .... 75,837 In Church Schools Uninspected by Government — returns 1866, simple Inspection . . 578,168 Eagged School Union, in and around London (Day only) 33,260 (Evening Scholars 15,239) Eeformatory and Industrial Schools, actual number under 16, — E. 1,314; I. 1,456: estimated number between 10 and 13 . 1,290 688,555 Number of Children not in Public Schools 1 ,0 14, 2 1 9 In Private Schools for Children of Poor in 1858 were 573,436; and supposing the same proportion is maintained, there would be in such Schools in 1868 . 638,107 Children not on any School Eegister 376,112 3H THE DEVELOPMENT OF that there ought to he, according to the estimate of the Royal Commis- sion, 3,499,656 children under education ; that in superior and in State- aided public schools there are 1,796,872; in unaided inspected schools, in uninspected Church schools, in ragged schools, and refor- matory and industrial schools, 688,555 ; in private schools for the children of the poor, 638,107 ; leaving a balance of 376,112 children not at school, of whom more than one-third are the children of paupers receiving out-door relief. “ In the figures furnished by Mr. Giver there is only one item which is liable to question. In 1858 there were, according to the returns obtained by the Royal Commission, 573,436 children of the poor in private schools. Mr. Giver, estimating for the increase of population in ten years, sets down the number for the present time as 638,107. We think it likely, however, that during the ten years, notwithstand- ing the check put upon the extension of public schools by the new code, a proportion of the private schools has been absorbed by public schools (inspected schools) set up in the same neighbourhood, and therefore that the proportion of children in private schools for the poor to the whole population may probably be less now than in 1858. If we allow for this consideration, 400,000 may be set down as the number of children not at school. Gf these it is likely that a considerable proportion belong to the out-door pauper class, of whom it will be seen that there are 164,000 children, very few of them being sent to school. Gthers, no doubt, may be found in the small and remote villages in which there is no day-school ; while another portion doubtless represents the Arab class of the streets. If there were an imperative, and not merely a permis- sive, enactmeut for sending the children of out-door paupers to school, it seems tolerably certain that the number of uneducated children would be reduced to about 250,000. But then the question will have to be asked, * What sort of an education do many of the children receive whose names are on school registers of one class or other ; and what is its worth and permanent result ” I may add that the Parliamentary grant for education in 1833 was £20,000; in 1840 was raised to £30,000 ; in 1850 was £180,110; in 1862 had risen to £774,743 ; in 1865, under the Revised Code, had fallen to £636,306 ; and in 1870 was £914,721. Last year (1872) it had risen, under the operation of the new Act, to £1,551,560. These figures represent the total grant for Great Britain. There are in England and Wales 319,979 Pauper Children under 16 ; the propor- tion between 5 and 13 being . . 164,873 Number of known Thieves and suspected persons within the Metropolitan Police District under 16 years of age . . 983 No estimate, it will be seen, is attempted for the properly criminal juvenile population of England. The last item, referring only to the Metropolitan Police District, was furnished to Mr. Giver by Colonel Henderson. The City Returns since obtained will not bring the number up to 1,000. POPULAR EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 325 The system of grants and inspection which was initiated in 1846-7 may be regarded as having been brought into full operation for Eng- land and Scotland, and for the various denominations, in its principles, methods and applications, about the year 1854 or 1855. In 1855 the Capitation Grant secured a numerical return of the children in average attendance. In 1855 the number of inspected schools was 4,800, and of scholars in average attendance, 537,585. In 1862 the numbers were 7,569 schools and 964,849 scholars. In 1870 the numbers were 10,949 and 1,453,531 respectively; in 1871 they were 11,465 and 1,866,009 respectively.* The number of children on the register may be reckoned at from 30 to 40 per cent, more than the number in average attendance. Between four-fifths and five-sixths of the number in attendance are English ; the remainder Scotch. * The admirable Statesman’ s Year Book^ in its successive issues, contains very useful educational statistics. CHAPTER VIII. SPECIAL FEATUEES IN THE PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SYSTEM OF ENGLAND PUPIL-TEACHERS FEMALE TEACHERS INFANT-SCHOOLS. M any things may change in our English system of popular education. Grants of all sorts may be done away ; all public Training Colleges, all public schools, including municipal schools or parochial schools, established out of the rates, may become self-supporting institutions ; all parents, except those recognised as paupers or quasi-paupers, paying the full price of the schooling given to their children ; in all these respects public education in England may be revolutionised. But it is hardly a risk to predict that, at least for a very long time to come, the pupil- teacher system must continue to rule in this country. It has been brought here to a degree of maturity and development elsewhere unknown ; and it is pre- eminently adapted . to the conditions of English society. I have already described this system in general as one by which a scientific form and organization has been given to that provision of pupil aid in schools of elementary instruction^ the need of which is ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SYSTEM, 327 universalh^ felt, and the rude and ready form of which, open to grave objection, and altogether imperfect and unsatisfactory, is found in the use of monitors, some- times recomised and desimated as such, and some- times extemporised as necessity compels, and used without formal recognition. I have shown how much public elementary education in the United States, in Germany, and in France has suffered for the want of such an organization of pupil-teacher assistance, and how well a system identical in principle with that of England has worked in Holland and Switzerland. I need hardly add that the organization of pupil- teachers is one which, whilst eminently serviceable in elementary schools — advantageous equally to the school and to the pupil-teachers themselves who are being trained for their profession — would be altogether out of place in secondary schools- — in schools for senior boys and for high instruc- tion. I will now proceed to sum up the reasons which seem to me to demonstrate the very great advantage of the pupil-teacher system over that of separate large classes and separate adult teachers, without any pupil-teacher aid, for schools of primary edu- cation. These advantages may be stated under five particulars. (1.) They secure to the chief teacher the needful aid in the most rudimentary work of instruction, so that all the children can be kept continually at work and in order, so that particular pains can be taken with those who are particularly slow^ or backward, and so that the chief teacher can bestow proper attention on the most important and difficult points of instruction, and can carry forward his most advanced scholars in propor- 328 PUPIL-TEA CHERS, tion to their age and capacity. For want of pupil- teachers all this is imperfectly performed, both in Germany and in France, notwithstanding the low salaries given in those countries to adult teachers. In this country, where wages of all sorts are so high, the case Avould be much worse than in Germany or in France, if the only teachers employed were adult teachers. In the United States, as we have seen, the want of a system of pupil-teachers in combination with an effective provision of Normal Colleges and of College training, tested by proper examinations, is the source of some of the worst evils complained of in the State Reports on Education. At present such a system is rendered impracticable by the prevalent character of the schools and of the school teachers in the States. (2.) I may venture to affirm that, even apart from any consideration of expense, or of the available supply of teaching power, the use of pupil- teachers in an elementary school, under special direction, and for certain sorts of very elementary instruction, is greatly to be desired. If an able teacher, in not too large a school, had to choose between the help of one adult assistant, and two capable and well-disposed pupil-teachers, I believe, in the great majority of cases, he Avould choose the pupil-teachers, and that he would choose rightly. He could more completdy impress his own indivi- duality on the school through their help than he could by the agency of an assistant. They are his apprentices ; they have grown up in the school and are identified with it ; they are still to continue in it till their apprenticeship is completed. He can have no such hold, nor can the school or the school com- mittee have such a hold, of an assistant who, if he PUPIL-TEA CHERS. 329 can find a better place, will leave within the year, as of his pupil-teachers ; nor can his own mind and will, his spirit and methods, operate through the independent and perhaps rival individuality of his assistant, as they can through the pupil-teachers. An assistant-teacher, in fact, is only in place in a large school, and there it ought to be made worth his while to remain for a considerable period, side by side, and working in complete sympathy and har- mony, with the chief teacher. It would be well, also, if such an assistant-teacher had himself the help continually of one or two pupil-teachers, all the staff, the while, working under the supreme sway of the will and individuality of the chief teacher. There is, moreover, one other point respecting the work of pupil-teachers to be borne in mind. It is an entire mistake to suppose that young people in their teens are not adapted to teach younger children. They are often, as to some points, the very best of teachers. Elder children, who clearly understand what is to be taught, have a wonderful homely, ready, simple, naive way of teaching younger children. They have also, when really gifted for their work, a lightness, a pleasantness, a buoyancy — I had almost said a gaiety — and withal a cheery patience in their teaching, which make them invaluable in a schoolroom. (3.) Elementary school teachers, in this as in other countries, will, there can be no doubt, continue to be drawn largely, although not henceforth exclusively, from the families of thoughtful and superior working people, in the receipt of weekly wages. Now the pupil-teacher system, taking hold of the best and fittest children of this class at the age of thirteen or fourteen, and securing to them moderate remuneration 330 PUPIL-TEA CHERS. for their services at school, together with the continu- ance of their education under their school teachers, and a gradual preparation for the business of their lives, makes it possible to retain in the needful large proportion the services of the children of the class I have described. But how would it be if there were no pupil-teacher system ? It would be absurd to expect that labouring people, as a rule, or in any large or adequate proportion, would forego, or allow their children to forego, the high weekly wages now to be realised by the employment of intelligent children, and would be at the further charge of keep- ing them still at school for five years together, until they were of an age to pass their examination and enter a training college. In the country districts of frugal Germany, where the peasants are all in a sort small farmers, where the labour-market does not com- pete for juvenile labour, where young j)eople, faring hard and scantily at home, and clad yet, as in former centuries, in home-spun, may be content to spend the years of their youth partly in labour on the family acre, and partly in study, students may be provided for Normal Colleges without the pupil-teacher system. Or in France, where elementary education is largely in the hands of Roman Catholic fraternities and sisterhoods, the supply of teachers may be kept up without our system. But in England, if it were not for the pupil-teacher system, we should either have our Normal Colleges left without candidates, or such candidates would be derived, almost exclusively, from the families of clerks, of unwealthy clergymen, and the poorer professional men in general. (4.) Elementary education is, in large measure, an art ; and requires, in order to success in its conduct, tact. PUPIL- TEA CHERS. 33 experience, and practised skill of a fine quality. The more supple the faculties, the more alert and youthful the energy, the more susceptible the sensibility, the more likelihood is there of superior teaching power. To such an art young people should be apprenticed early, if they are to be fully moulded to it ; the earlier the better, if the knowledge and the physical strength and energy be adequate. What is youth for but to prepare for manhood ? ^o omit the pupil- teacher apprenticeship from the total preparation of the future teacher would be to throw away the finest opportunity of laying the basis, in life’s most plastic period, for all the professional training and life-work of the future. (5.) Finally, the pupil-teacher appren- ticeship affords the opportunity of fully testing the aptitude of pupil-teachers for a life-work of teaching, before they take the decisive step of entering a Train- ing College ; while, in the case of those who, during their trial, prove not to be adapted for the work, the additional education and the training in habits of exactness and attention which they have received, will only make them better prepared for many other departments in the business and service of life. At the same time it is proper and needful to say that the present age at which pupil- teachers are apprenticed is younger by at least one year than is desirable. It is, I believe, universally confessed that it would be better if they were apprenticed at fourteen than thirteen. The reasons for this are sufficiently obvious. The real reason why the apprenticeship has been allowed to begin at so early an age has been the lamentably low age at which children have been accustomed to leave school, and the demands — oi PUPIL- TEA CHERS, 332 shall I say tlie temptations ? — of the labour market. As a matter of fact, the age at which the children of the working classes have been taken from school has, during the last twenty years, on an average, gone backwards instead of forwards. Children have left school for labour at an age continually earlier. From twelve the age has gone down to eleven, from eleven it has descended towards ten. Many have left school at ten ; few have* stayed after eleven ; very few indeed have remained till they were twelve. The new Act, however, cannot fail to make a considerable alteration in this respect. It recognises thirteen as the age up to which the education even of the children of the working classes should be carried. Moreover, the profession of teaching has greatly risen during the last few years, and is rising still. The payment of a good teacher is really much higher than of a fair ordinary clerk ; the emoluments of a first- rate trained teacher are very handsome ; and the way, besides, is opening for such teachers to obtain the position of school inspector, at least under School Boards, and to step upwards into the higher walks of the profession. Under these circumstances the thoughtful and superior class of parents, from whose families our pupil-teachers are derived, are likely to set a very high value on the prospects opened by the profession to their children. Parents of a higher social class, besides, are sure henceforth to look to the profession of public elementary teacher as one not only advantageous but honourable for their children to pursue ; and, as the result of all this, a large and increasing number of parents will be prepared to make greater sacrifices for the sake of getting their children into the pathway of a calling so superior and so FEMALE TEACHERS. 333 desirable. They will be content, too, to keep them at school till fourteen, in order that at that age they may be apprenticed as teachers, and may enter on their apprenticeship better furnished and prepared for their work. I cannot but anticipate, accordingly, that after the present crushing demand for teachers has been got over, the age of the commencing pupil- teacher will be raised from thirteen to fourteen years. I confess that I should hail such a modification of the present system with great satisfaction. Taken in connection with the reduction in large schools of the number of pupil-teachers by the substitution of an assistant-teacher not less than eighteen years old for two of the pupil-teachers, as is to be the rule in another year, according -to the present Government proposals, it will, I think, remove every objection to our Eng- lish pupil-teacher system, and at the same time leave it substantially intact, as a source of interest and power in our schools, an admirable system of aid to the chief teacher, and the best possible method of training those who are to be teachers in after life in an intelligent comprehension of the science, and in the best practice of the art, of teaching and training. There is another feature of our English system in which it excels all others, and that is the extensive employment of highly-trained female teachers — pro- fessional teachers — in our public schools. There is nothing like it in the world besides. In the United States female teachers are largely employed, because in such a country the extremely low salaries generally given to teachers will not attract the permanent services of competent men ; but the female teachers of America are seldom trained for their profession, and, as a rule, 334 FEMALE TEACHERS, only take up the work as a temporary interlude in life. In France female trained teachers are exten- sively employed, but these teachers are Roman Catholic rdigieuses, separated from family and common life. In Germany, and throughout the Protestant countries of the Continent generally, women are seldom or never trained or employed as teachers ; because, in fact, their recognised sphere, in all but the superior classes of society, is to drudge in menial toil, either within the house, or in the garden, or in the field. In educated Germany, whatever may be said of the respectabilit}^ and superiority of the German village school teacher, that village teachers sister is almost universally devoted to hard and coarse field labour, such as impresses upon her very early an appearance of servile and severe degradation, blots out every trace of refinement, and makes her, whilst still in middle life, appear prematurely old. As respects the refinements of domestic life, and all that belongs to the social position of woman, Germany might almost be regarded as a barbarous country com- pared with England. One evidence of this is seen in our female training colleges, and in the large store of female trained teachers, formed and disciplined by their training and their profession at once into refine- ment and self-reliance, who are to be found through out our country. Though our female teachers are none of them bound by any vow, many are so devoted to their profession that no light attraction will avail to detach them from it. Not a few have given, not a few will still give, a long course, it may be their adult lifetime, of active, happy service to their art and profession. None with such a profes- sion in their hands will be likely to leave it except FEMALE TEACHERS, 335 for a superior home. A large class of women are moulded into character by this profession who are thoroughly able to hold a modestly independent course through life. They can afford to wait and decide for themselves as to their future by a deliberate choice. In any misfortune or trouble of life which may come upon them, in widowhood or sudden reverse of circumstances, the art they have made their own will, if health be but spared to them, still be a foundation under their feet. Embarked on the sea of life, they at least feel that even in ship- wreck they can swim ; or, I may say, that they have small crafts of their own, which they are competent to manage, and which, from their watertight sound- ness and their buo/ancy, can scarcely sink in any sea. Nor is it only in respect of their profession that trained teachers have an advantage ; they have an advantage also if they leave it, and in any other sphere to which they may be transferred. The cul- ture and training they have received are of the utmost value in the family home, and scarcely of less value in the shop or in business. There is diffused, by means of the element of female trained teachers, throughout all the lower middle and working classes of our population an educative influence of a very superior, and at the same time very practical, character. In this country of ours, where our social refinement and superiority have made for us a diffi- culty much more felt than elsewhere, in the number of women who can scarcely, as in Germany, '' dig,’’ and who do not like either to starve or '' beg,” the opening for employment as public elementary teachers which is frankly and broadly offered must be recog- nised as of the very highest value. Young women, 33 ^ FEMALE TEACHERS. of the better educated classes, who desire to have a useful and independent mode of living, will find it immeasurably more happy and really respectable and properly independent than such positions as they have commonly sought in the past, whether as private governess, from the nursery-governess upwards, or as assistant in ordinary middle-class schools, or as com- panion to a lady. It is satisfactory to know that the employment of female teachers is likely to be more extensive in future than it has been hitherto. Not only will there, through the operation of the new Act, be of necessity a large immediate multiplication of girls’ and infants’ schools, but, to some extent, female teachers may not unlikely be employed in junior mixed schools, while in country villages, where there can be but one good school maintained for boys and girls and infants, it appears to be universally recog- nised that such a school ought to be under the charge of a female teacher. This is much better than in Ger- many, where all the schools and both sexes are taught by men, and where the infant-school system is only put ‘in operation by voluntary charity or by private teachers. In Germany the infant-school system is no part of public education. The school age there begins several years later than in this country. I cannot but regard that as a radical defect. It necessarily appertains to a scheme of education which excludes pupil-teachers and female teachers. In America, as I have already stated, infant-schools are little known. Our English infant-school system is one of our chief educational advantages. Having this, if we had but also a thoroughly settled and developed half-time system for children who have attained the age of ten. INFANT-SCHOOLS. 337 and have passed the fourth standard of examination, there can be no doubt that in this country we should be able to meet the demands of the generation both in respect of elementary education and of the juvenile labour market. z CHAPTER IX. THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. I N 1862 Mr. Lowe left the religious difficulty apparently in a fair way to be solved. He had adopted a principle which Mr. Miall, the Parliamentary leader of the extreme voluntary party, had recom- mended, that Government should pay only for '' secular results in education, as tested by Govern- ment examinations. At first, it seemed as if on this basis the bitterness of sectarian prejudice and animosity in regard to national education would be got over. There was, indeed, one condition with which all Government help was tied, that might seem somewhat to conflict with the simplicity and satisfactoriness of this principle, as a means of extri- cating the Government, to the eye of a secularist, from all responsibility for religious teaching in the schools. I refer to the condition that, in all besides Roman Catholic schools, the Bible must be read ; but if this compulsory requirement could be done away, it appeared as if all that a secularist could demand would be conceded, at least in respect to this main point of direct Government responsibility for religious teaching. There were, indeed, some other matters of detail in THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. 339 which the existing system of State aid to voluntary schools seemed to lend itself to the public counte- nance and perpetuation of ecclesiastical distinctions and differences. There was the principle of denomi- national inspection of which I have already spoken. Public opinion, however, was evidently prepared to support any Government in changing this principle for one of undenominational and merely district inspection, inspection of all schools according to their geographical position and relations, district by district. Such a change would involve the requirement that the Established Church, like the Roman Catholics or the Wesleyans, should make special ecclesiastical arrangements for the inspection or examination of its schools and pupil-teachers in religious know- ledge, and should admit lay inspectors to visit its schools. But as to this no serious difficulty could be apprehended in any permanent and national settlement of the question. There was, furthermore, the fact that in a large number of State-aided and inspected schools of the Church of England, it was required not only by the rules of the National Society, but by the trust-deeds of the schools, that all who attended the schools should receive specific denomi- national instruction in religion, and in particular in the Church catechism, and should attend the church on the Lord’s day. Government had earnestly and perseveringly sought in 1847 and 1848 to induce the authorities of the Church of England and of the National Society to relax the stringency of their re- quirements as to this point, and to adopt for all their schools a Conscience Clause similar to that which had been, for years previously, voluntarily adopted by the Wesleyan Conference in regard to 340 THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. their schools ; but the Church of England could not be brought to make any change in the rules and the legal provisions which, not without strong apparent reason and justification at the time, had been adopted nearly forty years before. At that time the National Society was a purely voluntary association, established for purposes predominantly, if not purely, religious, without any thought of Government in- spection or concurrence or pecuniary aid ; and the feeling of Nonconformist rights and rivalry was scarcely an appreciable force in the country, had little hold on public opinion, and was not at all represented in Parliament ; at that time, indeed, besides Church people, multitudes of Wesleyan Methodists regarded the instruction of their children in the Church catechism and attendance at morning church as consistent with their own religious and ecclesiastical position. This was the case, although they were members of a Connexion standing aside from the Church. But a revolution had gradually been established in public opinion during the period which elapsed between the foundation of the National Society in 1811 and the initiation of the system of State co-operation with the various Churches of England in 1846-50. It was the misfortune of the Church of England not to have recognised the fact of this revolution. Hence arose one of the difficulties of detail connected with the system of State co-opera- tion, which remained standing in the way until the enactment of the measure of 1870. Doubtless the difficulty was often more theoretical than practical. It was more frequently the uninspected than the in- spected National School in which undue influence was used in regard to the Wesleyan or Dissenting THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, 341 child. Where money was received from Government, and the Government inspector visited the school, the management of the school was often more liberal. An honest sense of equity, of public responsibility, of common civic rights, often restrained the clergyman who managed the school from acting on the letter of the National Society’s rules and of the school trust- deeds. But it could not be expected that Noncon- formists should discriminate between the State-aided and the independent and purely voluntary National School. In their view all Church of England schools were equally public schools, belonging to the parishes, connected with the State, and bound, as no other de- nominational schools could be bound, to respect the civil and religious rights and the conscientious convic- tions of the parents. Hence the feeling engendered by the known refusal of the Church authorities to allow a Conscience Clause, taken in connection with repeated complaints, in all the purely agricultural parts of the country, of the enforcement on the Nonconformist’s child, attending the National School, of absence from its own Sunday-school and from its parents’ chapel, and of attendance at the church and the church Sunday-school, was very deep and bitter, and con- tinued to accumulate during a whole generation be- fore the passing of the Elementary Education Act of 1870. It is remarkable that it was the form of the religious grievance which I have just described, rather than the requirement that all the scholars must learn the Church catechism, which was felt by Non- conformists to be the special hardship in the case. Dissenting children learnt about being '' made a child of God in baptism,” as about ''godfathers and god- 342 THE RELIGIOUS DIFEICULTY. mothers/’ merely as an exercise of memory. They could not but feel that what they were learning by rote was, so far as they were concerned, simply un- real ; that it stood in no relation whatever to the facts of their life and position ; and, although they knew they were expected to learn it, they were sure they could not be expected to believe it, and so the whole catechismal rote was to them a matter of mere repetition, only redeemed from utter unmeaningness and unprofitableness by the questions relating to God and their neighbour. But to be kept from their own and their parents’ Sunday-school and chapel on the Sunday, and to be obliged to go to church, was an oppression which pierced deep into the heart. Neither was the practical Dissenting grievance often connected with the personal lessons and in- structions, even on religious subjects, given in the day-schools by the teacher or by the clergy- man. I at least have scarcely ever heard of an instance of any complaint on such a ground, although it has been my official duty in my own church to make extensive inquiry, and to receive in- formation relating to such subjects from wide districts. National schoolmasters themselves have very rarely taught sacramental mysticism or ecclesiastical super- stition. Their teaching has been plain and practical, for the most part simply Scriptural. What the clergyman taught was comparatively of much less consequence. Children under ten or eleven are not very receptive of such doctrines as those which are often taught respecting baptismal regeneration, the real presence, and, in a word, the '' extensions of the Incarnation.” Not one clergyman, moreover, in a hundred has acquired the difficult art of so address- THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. 343 ing a gallery of children as to engage their interest and impress and convey real ideas into their mind. Nor have the children of Nonconformists generally any innate or acquired reverence for the clergy- man or his teaching, even although he should wear his surplice in his school. A few lessons of the doctrine of their own chapel or meeting-house, and the air of their own Sunday-school, will quite take the taste of all the Church teaching out of their mouths, and leave them, with their parents, im- plicitly convinced that the clergyman, however good and kind a gentleman, is in a sadly benighted con- dition as to what constitutes sound doctrine. Hence the grievance was the greater when the children were kept from their own Sunday-school and meeting- house. It appears to have been the custom of the clergy of the Church of England to ignore this specific form of Dissenting complaint. They seem to have made it almost a general rule to assume that to take to church on Sunday those whom they instructed on the week- day was a plain right that no one could dispute. They have assumed that the only complaints possible must relate to the matter or manner of religious in- struction during the week. They have sailed aloft in entire unconsciousness that the real grievance, at all events the great grievance, related to the Sunday. Hence they have been able to declare that they had heard of no complaints, or of scarcely any, in regard to the teaching imparted in their schools. ‘'No Dissenters offered any objection to anything they taught ; they forced no catechism or religious in- struction on parents or children ; there were no cases of oppression ; even inspectors met with none, heard 34 + THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. of none.” But inspectors were the last people likely to hear of such complaints ; complaints which had nothing to do with the week-day teaching in the school, but only with the requirement that children attending the day-school must also attend Sunday- school and church. If the oppressed parents had only dared to appeal to the press ; if the Church of England laity at large, much more the general laity of the country, had only been aware of the policy systematically pursued in many parishes, this form of spiritual tyranny would have been long ago put down by public indignation. -That this policy was pursued to far too wide an extent, and with decisive results in arousing indignation and producing bitter aliena- tion from the Church of England on the part of Wesleyan Methodists throughout all the predomi- nantly agricultural parts of the country, may be learnt from an article on Mr. Forster s Educational Bill ” in the London Quarterly Review for April, 1870. I am sorry to have been obliged to give so much space to the subject in this volume. It must be admitted, however, that the chief blame in this matter must rest not with the parish clerg}^, but with the authorities of the National Society. So long as the rules of that Society remained unaltered, and as the trust-deeds of National Schools con- tinued to be drawn on the ancient model, parish clergymen were placed in a very painful dilemma. They were obliged, in a large number of instances, either to break the rules of the Society with which they were identified, and to violate the provisions of their trust-deeds, or to compel their day scholars to attend their church and Sunday-school. It was, I venture to think, a weakness and an THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICUITV, 345 error on the part of the Government in 1847-8, that they yielded to the obstinate immobility of the National Society on the Conscience Clause ; but it was a for greater error, on the part of that Society, as representing the Church of England, that it per- sistently withstood the arguments and solicitations of the Government. As a matter of course, the Roman Catholic Church followed their precedent. The Wesleyans, prior to any transaction with the Government, had in the trust-deeds of their day- schools, and in their Connexional Day-school Rules and Regulations, fully recognised the rights of con- science. Many Wesleyans, in hasty but not un- natural indignation at the course pursued by the Church of England, which owns nearly three-fourths of the public elementary schools of the country, have come now to swell the number of those who demand the withdrawal of all Government connection with denominational schools. Notwithstanding all this, however, this question of the Conscience Clause and of the rights of religious liberty for parents and children, was not, as respects the Government, any serious difficulty in the way of permanent legislation. The principle of the Govern- ment, whatever party was in power, and of the leading statesmen of all parties, has always been to have a Conscience Clause. It was certain that, when- ever a Government measure was carried for consoli- dating and regulating public elementary schools, a Conscience Clause would be insisted upon, in any such measure, as a condition of obtaining: recocrni- ’ o o tion as a public elementary school. With payment for secular results only, with un- denominational inspection, with a broad and trenchant 346 THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, Conscience Clause, as three main planks in its settle- ment of the religious difficulty, it might have been thought that no Government would find any serious difficulty on this score. The extreme secularist party, however, have, during the last three years, shaped and expounded '' the religious difficulty ” into forms which had not before been anticipated. The '' religious difficulty,’’ as. it was understood previously to 1869, referred to the religious rights of parents in regard to their children, whether as respected education or worship. The new phase of the religious difficulty which has grown up during the last three or four years, relates to the rights of conscience of ratepayers, as respects the employment of money contributed by them to the taxes or rates. The only point as to the rights of the parental conscience which remains in question since the passing of Mr. Forster’s Act, is one connected with the efficiency and enforceableness of the Conscience Clause. The Conscience Clause of the Act, indeed, is very stringent and comprehensive. It deals both with the question of religious instruction in the schoolroom, and with the question of influence being used to constrain the day scholars in regard to school and worship on Sunday. But there are some persons, notwithstanding, who insist that no Conscience Clause will ever prove to be of any working value, that it will be evaded by the clergyman, or that the parents will be afraid to act upon it ; and, therefore, that the only way to escape all danger of interference with parental rights of conscience is to have purely secular schools, where no Conscience Clause would be required. It would be an easy and obvious reply to this THE RELIGIOUS DIFEICULTF, 347 allegation to say that the establishment of a secular school would do violence to the consciences of far more parents than it would relieve, and of a great majority, almost everywhere, of the ratepayers, as such. That this is so had been conclusively shown by the School Board elections during the last three years. But there are some other considerations which it is proper to urge in reply. The establishment of secular schools everywhere would not annul existing schools. Nor, I apprehend, would it seriously diminish the number in attend- ance upon them. It would afford a means of silencing objectors against clerical influence or Church teaching by pointing to the secular school provided. It would place objecting parents in the painful dilemma of acquiescing in the management or in- fluence to which they had objected, or of sending their children where no Christian teaching was given. Few would choose the latter alternative. Even if Government grants were withdrawn from the schools of the Church of England — which will hardly take place until Government grants are with- drawn from all public elementary schools equally, whether voluntary or Board schools — the effect in the great majority of cases would not be to do away with the Church school, but only to reduce it to a school of inferior appointments and pro- bably inferior teaching, without any Government in- spection to make known its inferiority, and without any force either of law (as by the Conscience Clause) or of public opinion to oblige it to be liberal in its administration. Such a result, however, as the universal establishment of secular schools cannot be regarded as within any range of probability, much 34 ^ THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. less can any such double result be supposed to be possible as the universal establishment of such schools and at the same time the withdrawal of grants from all other schools. But I am persuaded that the assumption that the Conscience Clause will, to any serious extent, be evaded by the managers of Church of England schools, is equally uncharitable and unwarrantable. The clergy of the Church of England, for the most part, are at least honourable men, English gentlemen. It is continually forgotten by disputants of a heated, sectarian, anti-Anglican temper, that, up to the passing of the recent Act, there was, with rare excep- tions, no Conscience Clause in any sense binding upon day-schools of the Church of England ; that, where there was, it was merely a clause somewhere to be found, if searched for, in a voluminous trust- deed, not ordinarily at hand for any one to be acquainted with ; and that the Government grant was in no way dependent, in any case, on the observance of the Conscience Clause ; while, on the other hand, the deeds of many National Schools, and the rules of all, made it a duty incumbent on the clergyman to enforce, at least as an ordinary condition of attendance at the day-school, that the scholar should attend church on the Sunday. The really liberal clergyman, in making exceptions and remis- sions in the case of Nonconformist children, had often a question to settle with his own conscience, how far he had a right to dispense with the requirements of the National Society’s rules and his own trust-deeds. But now the Act of 1870 overrides all these con- siderations. The annual grant, moreover, is made conditional on the observance of the Conscience THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. 349 Clause. Thus the truly liberal clergyman is now free, while, the intolerant clergyman receiving a grant is now bound, to respect the religious convic- tions of the parents and the children. The Act has, in fact, reversed the conditions under which thousands of schools previously worked, and has brought the eye of public opinion and the vigilance of Government inspection to bear upon the school administration. It prohibits and makes punishable, by a crippling fine, that is, by the abso- lute withdrawal of Government aid, all cases of the infraction of conscience, and appoints a strict and ex- perienced staff of inspectors to take cognisance of all such cases. There will of course remain means of sectarian influence which would find their way into any sort of school, and which no Parliamentary enactment could provide against. Sectarian tactics may, now and then, be made use of, in obscure villages, against which no Government measure and no statutory educational provision could afford a defence. Nothing can be done to meet such cases of small and cunning contrivance, of petty bigotry, except drag them into daylight, that those who per- petrate them may be exposed in the pillory of public notoriety. No sort of Conscience Clause, it must be admitted — no educational measure whatever, it must be added — can avail of itself, or all at once, to infuse manli- ness and a worthily independent spirit into the semi- pauper, serf-like sons of the soil. In spite of all that any Act of Parliament can do, many of these will still cringe to squire and parson, however much they may dislike Church or Church Catechism. Set them upright on their legs, and they will still go 350 THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, down on their knees when the living representatives of Church and State — whether as in constitutional union, or not — the representatives of territorial power and administrative influence and of religious office and antiquity — come within their view. Instruct them in their rights, and make their rights equally secure and plain ; they will, notwithstanding, go out of their way to offer up their rights and their allegiance to those in power and high position near them. What is to cure this ? Certainly not a secular school Among such a population, rates for a secular school could hardly be levied ; and if such a school were sot up, it would remain empty, even though it were a free school, while the children of such parents would be sent to the school of the parson and the squire. To do away with the cringing subserviency com- plained of something is needed, which no mere educational measure can supply. The relations of the labouring people to cottage and land need to be revolutionised, the pauper condition to be redeemed, and the pauper prospect to be moved away, before the abject spirit can be taken out. Not, indeed, that the Conscience Clause will be quite powerless even in such cases. It is by law made public in large and conspicuous printing in every inspected school ; the poor man s child sees it there, and practises upon it his power to read ; the poor man knows that it is there as the charter of his religious rights ; the poor man’s minister can appeal to the law and to the printed and public announce- ment of it ; the parish clergyman fully understands that the Government grant which he seeks is expressly suspended, as an absolute and universal condition, on his strict and full observance of this rule, and that his THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, 351 honour and conscience bind him, and public opinion as well as public law requires him, to keep it. It is idle, such being the case — it is an extreme instance of bigoted antipathy and prejudice — to pretend that the Conscience Clause will be a dead letter. I have no doubt it will be honourably observed by clergy- men generally, and that it will be an element of value and potency in educating the sons of English soil as to their civil and religious rights. The advocates of secularism in State education, however, rely quite as much on the other branch of their argument as on that with which I have now been dealing. They contend that the ratepayers’ rights of conscience can only be preserved sacred by a universal State system of secular education. Un- fortunately, however — here again — for their plea and contention, the ratepayers, when asked to speak for themselves, reply, all over the kingdom, by over- whelming majorities, that what their consciences especially revolt against is precisely that system of universal secular education which secularists would prescribe for the comfort and protection of their consciences. It must be admitted, notwithstanding, that, if the State is to interfere at all directly in the matter of popular education, its own function and responsibility should certainly be limited to that which is un- sectarian, and, if it were possible, would most con- veniently be limited to that which is secular, in in- struction and results. Here I find myself, in principle, pretty well agreed with the secularists. It is when they would forbid the co-operation of Christian organizations and of Christian teaching, otherwise provided, with the functions and work of the State in 352 THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, popular education, that, in common with most others, I am obliged to differ. As to what is positive, I would go with them a long way, although I am not prepared to admit that it is necessarily wrong, or any violation of the rights of conscience, for public money to be ever directly devoted to Christian education in an unsectarian sense, to unsectarianly religious popular education. But I must entirely differ from their ne- gative and prohibitory conclusions, when they insist that the State is to provide a barely and exclu- sively secular system of national education, which shall be held separate and aloof from all union or blending of Christian instruction and religious train- ing and influence. The present system of State co-operation with voluntary schools proceeds, in fact, as is expressly set forth in the Elementary Education Act, on a strictly secular principle. The grants of the Privy Council are made expressly and exclusively in consideration of the secular results of instruction. This, and this alone, is what the State pays for, in the case of such schools. The whole action of the State in these schools is limited to the appraising and rewarding of secular results.’’ In consideration of these, the State now contributes, on an average, about two-fifths of the annual cost of the education given in such schools. The schools, it must be remembered, have been established by their voluntary managers, and, on an average, very nearly one-third of the cost is provided by the managers, the remainder — nearly a third more — being provided by the school fees. Of course the schools which thus do the State’s work receive an advantage from the State’s contri- bution. But this is not a fair objection against the THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. 353 system. Doubtless, the Eoman Catholic community receives an indirect benefit when a Government contract is given to a Roman Catholic. If this objection is pressed, it must take effect far and wide. Suppose that, in a Baptist school, uninspected, and therefore wdthout any Government grant — a free and independent Baj^tist scdiool — advantage is taken, as I have reason to believe that advantage has been taken in some large and admirable elementary schools of that denomination, of the examinations under the Science and Art Department to have well-prepared scholars examined in drawing, geometry, and other such subjects, and that, in consequence, grants have been earned at the rate of Ss. per successful child, besides prizes for the children ; is all this to be stigmatized and disallowed as concurrent endow- ment ? Observe, in these cases there is no Con- science Clause ; the religious teaching is thoroughly denominational, and its spirit pervades the whole of the instruction through all the hours. The money earned in these cases goes to help the funds and to promote the reputation and prosperity of most thoroughly and intensely denominational institutions, of schools which have no properly public character whatever. Yet I never heard an objection raised to such schools, or to any schools, sending in scholars to pass the examinations and to earn the grants of the Science and Art Department. This is done continually. Nobody would dream of denouncing it. How incon- sistent then to denounce the principle of procedure embodied in the Education Act, so far as respects grants to voluntary schools ! Surely reading, writing, and arithmetic are as strictly secular results as draw- ing and geometry. The voluntary schools, more- A A 35 + THE RELIGIOUS DIFEICULTY. over, are really public schools, inspected ’ by Govern- ment under a Conscience Clause, and teaching nothing at all but secular instruction, except at one fixed hour per day. If a Baptist uninspected school may earn from the Science and Art Department grants per child on examination, it is a clear d fortiori argument that public elementary schools, although under voluntary management, that inspected schools, working under a Conscience Clause, may rightfully earn grants on examination for '' secular results.” What, indeed, is the difference in principle between the arrangement sanctioned in the recent Act, which limits religious instruction strictly to a certain time, before or after the ordinary school hours, and the principle which secularists themselves, constrained by the hard facts of the case and by the claims of Christianity — by the religious necessities of the chil- dren — have now, it would seem, agreed to support, viz. that religious instruction may be given in the schoolroom to the children at appointed and conve- nient times by the accepted religious teachers of their own denomination ? After this concession the only difference of principle left is the point of proscription as contended for by the secularists. They would pro- scribe and disable the lay teacher — the man ordinarily best qualified, and whose Christian teaching would be every way most influential and beneficial as an element in the total education of the children — from taking any part in the Christian instruction of the children under his care ! That they can finally per- severe in the maintenance of a principle so illiberal, in the advocacy of such a disability and proscription, levelled against lay teaching of morals and religion, against the exercise by the ordinary teacher of the THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, 355 highest power for discipline, for influence, for all that is good, which a teacher can have, seems to me to be incredible. Such a proposition from an Ultramon- tane quarter might not have been surprising. Coming from ‘‘ advanced Liberals ” it is altogether astonishing. It appears to me, accordingly, that so far as the direct interference of the general Government, the central administration of the nation, with the matter of popular education is concerned, the question of religious instruction ought to be solved on this prin- ciple. It combines the convenience of the merely secular principle in extricating the Government from all entanglement with controverted doctrines or par- ticular sects, with the advantage of practically allow- ing religious instruction and influence to be, through the concurrence of voluntary agency, combined with general instruction. Another principle, however, has ruled, thus far, in regard to School Board education — education, that is, as provided by local rates, in municipalities and parishes, and as managed and administered by locally-elected boards. In the great majority of these cases, the principle adoj)ted has been that of unsectarian Christian education in the schools — the unsectarian religious instruction, like the religious instruction in the voluntary schools, being given at a flxed period preceding or following the ordinary and statutable school hours, and under the regulations of a Conscience Clause. Of course this arrangement lies distinctly open to the objection, whatever force there may be in it, that it is an employment of public money, in fact of local rates, distinctly and expressly for the purpose of religious instruction. The instruc- tion, indeed, is called unsectarian but to a Roman 35 ^ THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. Catholic it is sectarian, being a form of generically Protestant instruction out of the Scriptures. So also to the Deist, the Rationalist, the “ advanced Liberal’' Unitarian Christian, it is a form of sectarian and dogmatic instruction, opposed to his conscientious convictions." So for as the instruction goes, it is a broad Protestant form of Biblical Christianity, and favours certain Christian sects in common, to the exclusion of other religious communities, professedly Christian, or, j>erhaps also, professedly non-Christian. This is a difficulty which, in the case of School Board schools, could not be avoided, except by falling into the other and greater difficulty of setting up abso- lutely secular schools for the training and instruction of the most neglected and degraded classes. The solution possible in the case of voluntary schools is not possible or compatible in the case- of these schools. It is obvious that such Board schools as these are opposed in principle to the rigid theory of separation between Church and State. This is a question for Radical and thorough-going anti-State-Churchmen, who are in favour of Bible instruction in Board schools, to settle on their own account. Let them, at the same time, ask themselves how they can bring themselves to allow the appointment of chaplains to regiments and to vessels of war. It is remarkable, I may here note, that, in the School Boards generally, no objection appears to have been raised even by extreme anti-State-Church secu- larists to voting large moneys continually in support of industrial schools, all of which are on a distinctly religious basis, and of which a considerable number ure Roman Catholic, THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, 357 To me it seems that tlie principle which maintains that nothing can be clone or provided by Act of Par- liament, or by the will of any majority, however over- whelming, which infringes on what any man holds as his conscientious convictions, or which requires him to contribute towards the teaching of anything which he religiously disapproves or conscientiously rejects as false and of evil tendency, is a principle simply incompatible with national integrity or any form of government. The Mormon professes to hold conscientious and religious convictions in antagonism with the morality recognised by our public law in this country. Besides which, even '' secular instruc- tion ’’ is certain to include much which, by impli- cation if not directly, is opposed to the religious opinions, which must stand at least for religious con- victions, of many ratepayers, while the crude and untrue scientific teachings of many teachers will impinge as painfully against the conscientious convic- tions of our scientists,” to whom science is religion, as any headlong or erroneous religious dogmatism against the religious convictions of certain ratepayers. For my part, I do not see why a man of science may not as ‘‘ conscientiously ” object to have to contri- bute any quota of rates for the teaching of false science as a secularist in religion for the teaching of religious dogmas. In these matters the average want and claim of the great majority must be held to decide what ought to be done. When an objector has done his best, as a citizen, to influence this decision, he ought to have satisfied his conscience. There must, after all, be government. No abstract principle is sound which, in the concrete, proves to be quite impracticable. 35^ THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. What men take to be an abstract principle is often a working prejudice founded upon limited and ill- interpreted experience — -a shell of words in which some principle is embodied which those who use the words have not learnt truly to abstract and define. CHAPTER X. RECENT LEGISLATION FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. I T was evident for several years before 1870 that the question of National Education for England must soon be dealt with on a comprehensive scale. This was indeed a foregone conclusion from the time that the Democratic Reform Bill (1867) was passed by the Tory Government. Mr. Lowe had in 1861-2 proposed by his Revised Code to deal out education to the people as a pauper dole. But the new Reform Bill led him to declare that one of the first and most pressing duties of the new Parliament would be to teach their new “ masters their letters.” The Duke of Marlborough, as a member of Mr. Disraeli’s Government, had brought in a bill in 1868 for the settlement and extension of public elementary educa- tion, but it was inadequate to meet the necessities of the case — it went, indeed, almost wholly upon the old foundations — and the Tory Government were in no position to carry it through. When, in 1868-9, the Liberal Government acceded to office, and Mr. Forster became Vice-President of the Council, it was understood from the first that a measure for extend- ing and consolidating national education must come 35o PRIMARY EDUCATION IN to the front. Such a measure was announced as to be brought forward in the Queens Speech for 1870, and Mr. Forster, Dr. Arnold’s son-in-law, the brother- in-law of Mr. Matthew Arnold, the Educational Inspector and Commissioner, himself also one who had taken a very thorough and deep interest in popular education for years, who had often spoken on the subject in Parliament, who was a practical manager of elementary day-schools, and had, along with Mr. Bruce and Mr. Egerton, brought forward an Education Bill of acknowledged merit in the House of Commons two or three years before, was very dis- tinctly marked out as specially fitted, as Vice-Presi- dent of the Council, to undertake the question. Accordingly, on the 17th of February, 1870, Mr. Forster moved for and obtained leave to bring in the Government Elementary Education Bill, and, in so doing, explained the general principles of the measure. Of the scope and chief provisions of the Bill I shall soon speak particularly. Here I need only remark, to explain what immediately follows, fthat one provision of the Bill was that, to whatever extent a final defi- ciency of school accommodation should be ascertained in any district, that deficiency should be met by means of schools to be founded, and in part sustained, by local rates, and that the local authorities — the local School Board which, in all such cases, was to be created — should be left to decide what should be the religious complexion of such schools, and how the religious instruction, if any, should be imparted in themo On the 14th of March he moved the second reading of the Bill. At this stage, Mr. Dixon, the chairman and Parliamentary representative of the Birmingham League for the promotion of secular. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 361 free, and compulsory education, moved an amend- ment to tlie effect that no measure could be satisfac- tory which left the question of religious instruction in schools supported out of national funds and local rates to be determined by local authorities. There had been three nights’ discussion on asking leave to bring in the Bill, and there were again three nights’ discussion on the second reading, but Mr. Dixon withdrew his amendment after the discussion, and the second reading passed without a division. Three months now elapsed during which the Bill made no progress, owing to the way being blocked by the Irish Land Bill. That measure, however, having passed, the Committee on the Education Bill was taken on the 16th June. The Prime Minister on that occa- sion announced several important changes which Government proposed to make in the Bill — changes so important that it was agreed, after some discussion, that the Bill should be reprinted and re-committeed. The modified Bill was, accordingly, brought forward again in Committee four days later (June 20), and was discussed for four long nights. On this occasion Mr. Dixon, as representing the Birmingham League, retired in favour of Mr. H. Eichard. Mr. Eichard, seconded by Sir Charles Dilke, moved a resolution to the effect that the existing denominational schools should not be increased that attendance ought to be made everywhere compulsory, and that religious instruction ought to be supplied by voluntary effort and not out of public funds. To the last point it was replied in effect that in denominational schools the religious instruction was not and would not be supplied out of public funds, that the public funds were contributed, as expressly stated in the Bill 362 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN itself, only as payment for secular instruction. Mr. Richard’s motion was lost by a majority of 361, the votes in its favour numbering 60. The Bill was pressed so diligently forward that, notwithstanding the innumerable amendments of which notice had been given, it passed through Committee in a month, and on the day after the Committee’s work was ended its third reading in the Commons was taken (July 22nd). On the same day it was read a first time in the House of Lords ; it was read a second time on the 25 th ; it entered and passed through Committee in the House of Lords on the 29 th ; the amendments were reported on the 1st of August, and the third reading taken on the 2nd. On the 4th the Lords’ amendments were reported to the Commons, and, for the most part, agreed to. On the 8th the Commons’ disagreement from certain amendments was reported to the Lords, and admitted by their lordships, the same being reported to the Commons the next day. On the same day (August 9) the Royal Assent was given to the Bill, and it became an Act and Statute of Parliament. The only amend- ment of any importance made by their lordships was the disallowance of the election of School Boards by ballot except in London. The new Act retained existing inspected schools, but it made a time-table Conscience Clause impera- tive in all schools in which religious instruction was given ; it also did away with all denominational classifications of schools and with denominational inspection, treating all inspected schools as equally belonging to a national system of schools and under * The principal provisions of the Act are given in Appendix A at the end of this volume. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 363 national inspection, the distinctions as to inspectors and their provinces being henceforth purely geo- graphical. But the new Act no longer required that public elementary schools established by voluntary agency and under voluntary management should have in them any religious character or element whatever, whether as belonging to a Christian church or deno- mination, or as connected with a Christian jolT^ilan- thropic societjq or as providing for the reading of the Scriptures in the school. It was left open to any party or any person to establish purelj^ voluntary schools if they thought fit. But, furthermore, the Act made provision for an entirely new class of schools, to be established and (in part) supported out of local rates, to be governed by locally-elected School Boards, and to have just such and so much religious instruction given in them as the governing boards might think proper, at times preceding or following the prescribed secular school hours, and under the protection of a time-table Conscience Clause, as in the case of voluntary schools, with this restriction only, that in these schools no catechism or denomi- national religious formulary of any sort was to be taurfit. The mode of electing members to the School o o Boards was to be by what is called the cumulative vote — that is, each elector was to have as many votes as there were candidates, and these votes he could give all to one, or else distribute among the candi- dates as he liked ; and all ratepayers were to be electors. The original draft of the Bill did not contain the restriction as to School Board schools, which for- bids denominational standards or formularies to be taught in them. Moreover it allowed School Boards to engage and use voluntary schools as their own 3 64 PRIMARY ED UCA TION IN schools, on conditions to be agreed upon with the managers of those schools, the management, however, being still left, as before, with those who had esta- blished the schools. The Nonconformists generally, however — all but universally — insisted that, in case School Boards employed, and fro tanto adopted, such schools, all denominational formularies should be excluded from them. Modifications in reofard to the two points I have now mentioned were announced by Mr. Gladstone in the speech in which he moved the second reading of the Bill. He stated that the Government would agree to disallow denominational formularies in Board schools, and would do away with the provision enabling Boards to employ and aid with rates denominational schools. The new law thus made a clear separation, in one respect, between voluntary and Board schools. Both were to stand equally in relation to the National Education Department, under the Privy Council ; but the volun- tary schools were to have nothing to do with local rates or rate aid, nor Local Boards to have any con- trol over voluntary schools. In connection with this the Prime Minister announced that there would be an increase in the Privy Council grants to schools, '' within a maximum of fifty per cent.’’ That, however, was a misleading statement. The new rates of grant per child in average attendance, or per child who j)asses the inspector’s examination, increased apparently by fifty per cent., are connected with new and very much more stringent conditions, as to the number of times a child examined must have attended school, and as to the attainments which are to earn a grant. The school regulations, See Appendix B, which gives the chief provisions of the New Code. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 365 also, as to teaching staff, are made more exacting and expensive. Moreover, whatever may be nomi- nally earned by the examination in any school, more is not to be paid than 15s. per child in average attendance, or than one-half of the total cost of the school’s maintenance for the year, the excess above either of these limits being forfeited. Now the average earned under the former dispensation amounted to nearly 1 Os. a scholar in attendance, where- as the maximum which under any conditions can now be paid in the best school is not to exceed 15 s. That is to say, the possible maximum under the j)resent dispensation is fifty per cent, above, not the maximum, but the average, under the former. As a matter of fact, many good schools under the former conditions earned a grant of 13s., 14s., even 15s. per scholar in average attendance, and now they can- not possibly be paid more than 1 5s. Twenty shillings may be, and 1 believe occasionally are, nominally earned; but not more than 15s. can be paid. The actual increase of grant under the new Act has been about twenty per cent. — from an average of 10s. to an average of 1 2s. ; it may perhaps in some years to come reach twenty-five per cent. No one can read Mr. Gladstone’s speech, delivered on the second read- ing of the Bill, without seeing that he was not at all clear in his own understanding of the case. He promised that the grants should be raised from the amount of one-third of the average cost of a year’s education for a child to a possible maximum of one half, that is from 10s. to possibly 15s. ; but he did not understand that the 10s. average in past adminis- tration and former grants involved already a possible maximum of 15s., and that, in fact, his possible 366 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN maximum was not raised by a penny, 15 s., or one- half of the annual expense, having been the double limitation of grants under the former Code no less than under the new Act and Code. Mr. Gladstone’s misconception on this point was peculiarly unfortu- nate, because no one feature in the new Act has excited greater hostility than the supposed increase of Privy Council grants by fifty per cent. The actual increase, as I have stated, has been about twenty per cent. In connection with these changes, Mr. Gladstone also stated that building grants were for the future to be done away. This was a very considerable change and a very proper one. To contribute State money towards the erection of school-buildings en- tirely under the management of denominations, and indeed their permanent property, on the sole con- dition that, if the school were sold, payment should be made to Government of the money originally con- tributed, or so much of it as might be demanded, was too much like a real endowment of the denomi- nations with property for ordinary persons to be able to discern the difierence, especially as the special condition, in the case of sale, would, of course, only be known to few, to hardly any beyond the trustees or managers. The Wesleyan Methodists, however, were the only party to urge this point on the Government. As this matter of the cessation of building grants is in itself important, and particularly as the most extraordinary misrepresentations in relation to it have been extensively current, it will be proper to give exact and full explanations respecting it. The proposal to bring building grants to an end emanated, ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 367 as I have said, from the Wesleyan Methodists. A deputation officially representing that body of Christians had an interview with Mr. Gladstone on May 25th, 1870, and presented resolutions urging a number of changes in the Bill then before Parliament, of which several were of a somewhat trenchant character, and one of which went to the abolition of Building Grants. The deputation was headed by the Rev. Dr. Jobson, then President of the Wesleyan Conference. I was myself also present, and was called upon to explain the views of the deputation as to the detailed alterations or modifications which they desired to press on the Government. In so doing I used the following words, in relation to the aboli- tion of building grants, as urged by the dejiuta- tion : — “It was also the conviction of the Wesleyan Com- mittee that building grants from the Government to denominational schools ought immediately to come to an end. B)^ discontinuing grants to aid in building denominational schoolrooms, the objection on the ground of concurrent endowment would be largely met. The function of the Government would be reduced and limited to that of testing, and apprais- ing, and rewarding the purely secular results of edu- cation. They were further of opinion that no school which did not to the fullest extent accept a Conscience Clause should be counted, or should have any stand- ing at all as an elementary school, in the preliminary census or inquiry as to school provision under the Bill. . . . They were all agreed that the permissive faculty of inspection under the Bill should be done away. By such changes as had been indicated, the relation of the Government to the existing schools 368 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN would he separated from all cognisancn of their deno- minational character. ' ’ * It is remarkable that, as we have seen, until the Methodists urged their objection to the continuance of building grants, no whisper of any suggestion had been heard in any quarter for doing away with them. Among the innumerable amendments announced, no amendment to this effect was proposed from any quarter. To all appearance, these grants might still have been going on, but for the action which the Methodists took. Mr. Forster gave way on this point almost immediately after it had been urged by the Wesleyan deputation. And yet, because the abolition of these grants — sealed as law by the pass- ing of the Bill in August, 1870 — did not actually take effect until the 31st of December, Mr. Forster has been more abused by far by those who themselves never thought of asking for the cessation of such grants at all, than he would have been if he had left them still in full operation ; as much so, indeed, as he could have been if he had introduced such grants for the first time, had created them as a new feature of administration, or had largely increased them in pro- portionate amount. Men have spoken wildly and wrathfully about ‘‘ a year of grace,’’ an extension of time,” and I know not what. Such phrases, so far as they ever had any applicability to the Bill, applied to an entirely separate set of provisions, which had nothing what- ever to do with building grants. The truth as to the building grants is simple and soon told. Building * Report 'of the adjourned meeting of the United Committees on Primary Education, p. 173. London Wesleyan Conference Office, 1870. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 369 grants for day-schools were granted under the '' Ee- vised Code ’’ of Eegulations. This Code came to an end, and was superseded by the New Code, on the 31st of March, 1871, or immediately thereafter. In all other respects in which the Act introduced any change into tlie administration of existing schools and school interests, these changes began, accord- ingly, on the 1st of April, 1871. For example, denominational inspection came to an end, and, un- denominational, merely territorial, inspection began, and the Conscience Clause was required to be set up in all schools, at that date. Whereas, by a special exception, building grants came to an end three months earlier — on December 31, 1870. There is no more foundation than this for the outcry about '' extension of time ’’ for building grants. It is the opposite of the truth. The first change of adminis- tration effected, by the Bill, the earliest by three months, so far as respected existing schools, w^as the stoppage of building grants. The Bill passed August 9, 1870 ; no application for a building grant was entertained by the Department that was not presented, in its completed form, by or before December 31, 1870. As for the idea that the grants could all be stopped on the very day of the passing of the Act, it is simply absurd — the proposition would have been against all justice as well as all precedent. There were hundreds of cases, in regard to which preliminary in- quiries had been made from the Education Depart- ment, and projects started, but which had not been formally entered ; there were hundreds more which had been entered, but not completed ; it would have been impossible to strangle all these cases by the clause of a Bill, late and suddenly introduced. No 37 ^ PRIMARY EDUCATION IN Government would have ventured on the respon- sibility of such a feat ; no Parliament would have sanctioned it ; no precedent could have been found for so violent a procedure. As a matter of fact, Mr. Forsters clause for bringing building grants to an end with the end of the year passed without opposi- tion or discussion. Neither Mr. Dixon nor any one else ever proposed in Parliament any amendment for the instantaneous arrest and extinction of all building grant operations. If any such amendment had been put on the notice paper of the House, it is certain it would never have got a hearing in the House. Is it possible, therefore, to conceive of anything much more disreputable in the annals of politico-ecclesiastical controversy, than that Mr. Forster should have been abused, as he has been, on the charge of his having done, in fact, the contrary of what he actually did ; or that he should have been made an unpardonable offender for not having done that Avhich no member of the party that makes it its almost chief business to malign him ever ventured to propose to the House of Commons that he should be asked to do ? There is an interval, it is true, which may, in a certain sense, be called an interval of grace, con- nected with the working of the Act, but it has nothing to do with building grants. I refer to the interval allowed by the Act, after the educational deficiency of any district has been determined, for voluntary effort to make provision for the deficiency set forth, before the Department requires a School Board to be con- stituted, and to do the needful work. This interval cannot exceed six months, but is otherwise indefinite. Long before any district in the country had such an interval of grace ’’ allowed to it, all building ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 3T grants under the Act had come to an end.'" The whole period during which applications for such grants could be made after the passing was about eighteen weeks. During those eighteen weeks the Volun- taries, especially the Church of England, certainly exerted themselves wonderfully. A considerable proportion, however, of their applications have proved abortive. The projects have not been carried out. The actual number of school-buildings erected and of grants received is, perhaps, not more than two-thirds of what at one time seemed likely to come forward. Meantime to the Methodists must be assigned the responsibility of having brought the system of building grants to an end. That system had done good work for the nation in its time. Without it schools would have been much fewer. But its administration had left rankling memories behind, because of instances of unfairness, which in Mr. Lingen’s time had become frequent, and indeed systematic, in dealing with applications supported respectively by the parochial clergy or by Noncon- formist committees. Under the new Act, moreover, the cases of school-buildings required in specially des- titute localities can be met by the School Board provi- sion. To proscribe voluntary co-operation with the State * Originally the interval allowed to voluntary effort was to have been limited not to “ six months,” but to one year,” as a maximum. Afterwards this maximum was reduced to six months. I believe that in his Parliamentary exposition of the measure Mr. Forster used the expression a “ year of grace ” in regard to this maximum. But in any case the “ grace ” had no reference to any interval allowed for obtaining building grants. Yet in all the angry discussions on Mr. Forster’s treachery the phrase has been used as if there were still “ a year ” to be allowed — and in all cases — and as if the “ grace ” was an extension of the period originally assigned by the Bill for the cessation of building- grants. In fact, the current allegation has been most curiously false in all respects. PRIMARY EDUCATION IN 372 on the part of Christian communities in the work of educating the people, would have been wanton waste and intolerable oppression. To stimulate and help forward the provision of school-buildings for the poor by specific grants in aid of building voluntary schools was no longer necessary, and therefore no longer advisable. The first function of the Boards which were to be established under the Act was to be the establish- ment of schools to the extent required in each locality. It was assumed that there ought to be school provision for a number of children equal to one-sixth of the whole population. Special inspectors were to be sent forth to examine all exist- ing schools, of whatever sort, and their report, subject to appeal to the Education Department, was to determine what schools, because of unsuitable premises or inefficient instruction, or for both reasons, were not to be counted as available to supply education. All schools not thus disqualified were to be reckoned as providing education according to their capacity, determined upon a regulation scale of measurement. Thus by an initial survey the total educational supply in the country was to be ascer- tained, and the result was to be published in detail. Thus every School Board would be enabled to under- stand what was the actual provision, and to calculate the amount of deficiency to be supplied. It was then to be the duty of the School Board to fill this up. School Boards, however, were not made necessary, in the first instance, except in the case of London. Boroughs and parishes were to apply to have School Boards established. But Boards were to be imposed by ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 373 the Department wherever, after a deficiency had been ascertained, upon the survey and calculation of the Department, and had been announced by public notice, such deficiency was not. supplied, within six months after such announcement, by voluntary effort and undertaking. School Boards were, therefore, to be established Avherever there was an ultimate deficiency which voluntary enterprise failed to meet ; and they might be established wherever a duly constituted representative meeting, as defined by the Act, made a requisition for a Board to be established. For it was not to be their sole and whole duty to supply deficiencies, and to set up and manage such schools as might be necessary. It was also to be a part of their function and power, if they thought fit to undertake the work, to compel the attendance of all children at school between the years of five and thirteen, provided always that they did not contra- vene in any way the existing Factory and other Acts for securing half-time labour and half-time education between certain fixed ages. The Act, however, made no provision for indirect compulsion. Indeed, such provision, being in the Home Secretary’s department, could only be made by a separate enactment. For want of such collateral and corroborative legal pro- vision of indirect compulsion it was foreseen, from the first, by practical educationists, that the Act could never prove thoroughly effective as a measure for compelling education, except, perhaps, within some special and limited areas. The fact that the compulsory provisions of the Act were permissive only has been regarded by some persons as a defect. It is certain, however, that no measure for universal compulsion would have passed 374 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN Parliament. Moreover, the great thing is to learn how to compel, to ascertain by trial the detailed provisions necessary to carry out compulsion. Ex- perience has now abundantly proved that this could only be learnt by many and various experi- ments. Nor is it probable that the same methods and expedients will ever apply to the whole country. Even towns differ greatly from each other in this respect ; while the case of agricultural districts is so entirely different from that of large towns, that the same provisions which apply to the one would never apply to the other. Such is an outline of the famous Act which it was the high distinction of Mr. Forster to carry through Parliament in 1870, and to conduct in such a manner through its various stages as commanded the highest tribute of thanks from his chief, and warm and hearty eulogies from all quarters of the House. Before I proceed to offer some remarks on the general principles of the Act, it will be proper to trace the genealogy of legislative attempts and ideas by which the country has been led to the result of carrying the present measure into law. Several ineffectual, and yet not altogether abortive, because by no means useless, attempts in the direc- tion of the Act had prepared the way among well- instructed friends and leaders of education for the acceptance of Mr. Forster s Bill. The main ideas of his measure were local boards and local rating, the pre- servation and utilisation of existing schools, the incor- poration in one system of the voluntary schools and the newly created Board schools, the power of converting or transforming voluntary schools into Board schools, the universal requisition and enforcement of a strict ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 375 Conscience Clause, tlie separation of the voluntary provision for religious instruction from the public provision and responsibility for secular instruction, and the permissive provisions for compulsory educa- tion. As originally drawn, the Bill made provision for extending aid from local rates to voluntary inspected schools, where such aid might be a mutual economy and advantage both to the managers and the ratepaying public. This provision would have brought such schools into direct relation with the Boards, as themselves Board schools in a modified sense, and would have given the Boards certain responsibilities and rights in regard to such schools. Now there can be no doubt that the immediate progenitor of Mr. Forster s Cabinet measure of 1870 is to be found in the '' Education of Poor Bill,’' which was brought into the House of Commons in 1867 by Mr. Bruce, Mr. W. E. Forster, and Mr. Algernon Egerton. There can be as little doubt that the real, though not so modern or so well remembered, original of this Bill was the '' Manchester and Salford Boroughs Education Bill,” which was brought into the House of Commons in the Session of 1851-2. Mr. Egerton, whose name stood on the back of the later Bill, was confessedly the personal representative of the same earnest and influential union of the friends of education in Manchester which brought forward the earlier Bill. Fourteen or fifteen years, indeed, had not passed without taking away some who had taken an active part in preparing the Bill of 1851. Mr. Entwisle, M.P., was no longer living; others had died or had left Manchester. But Canon Eichson and several more still remained at their post ready to lend their best help to any honest 37 ^ PRIMARY EDUCATION IN endeavour to solve the educational problem of the nation. These, joined by some earnest and candid men, who had originally been supporters of Mr. Fox’s Secular Bill, but who had learned practical wisdom by the experience of the intervening years, put the machinery into motion which in 1867 brought forth to public view the Bill of Messrs. Bruce, Forster, and Egerton, of whom the two former belonged in 1867 to “Her Majesty’s Opposition.” It is not possible, indeed, to read the projected Bill of 1851 without recognising that it contains the substance of the Bill which was brought forward in 1867. The points of coincidence between the two may be noted. Both were devised in Manchester ; both had reference to individual boroughs (or dis- tricts) ; in both the local authority was to be the District Committee elected by the Town Council (or by the ratepayers in other dis- tricts) ; both gave such Committees authority to levy local rates ; both adopted existing schools as the basis of operation, and only contemplated the establishment of new schools in order to supplement the others where there might be need ; both pro- vided for the transference on fair terms of existing schools to the District Committee ; both assumed that in all schools under the District Committee the reading of the Holy Scriptures should be part of the daily instruction of the scholars ; both enforced a Con- science Clause, substantially equivalent to that which is contained in the present Government Act ; both made provision for a system of local and subordinate inspection ; both recognised the supreme authority of the Committee of Privy Council over the local schools and the local inspection ; both erred by reason of their ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 377 large provision of free education. The Manchester and Salford Bill, indeed, provided for the universal remission of fees in district schools, and the universal payment of fees on a certain defined scale in incorporated voluntary schools. The Bill of 1867 provided for the separate establishment of free schools as a special class of schools. Manchester is, it can hardly be doubted, learning by degrees how injurious is the element of free education in a popular system. That great city would hardly now, as in 1851, propose to educate all free. The operations of its '‘Education Aid Society,” and, yet more recently, of the two borough School Boards in respect to the wholesale payment and remission of fees under the Act, can hardly have failed to leave important les- sons on this point behind. The measure of 1870 was stronger, more decisive, and more sweeping than the Bill of 1867. It was not the proposal of some private members, apart from any party, but the Cabinet measure of a most powerful Government. As such it was not partial, but universal, in its scope : it was imperative as to most of its provisions, although it was permissive in its compulsory clauses. Add to the Bill of 1867 the strong outline of administrative interference which, about the same period, Mr. Lowe sketched out as necessary in order to carry out the work of national education ; add further, the compulsory clauses which Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Bazley desired to add to the Bill of Messrs. Bruce, Forster, and Egerton ; and we have, in fact, the Bill of 1870, as originally pre- pared by Mr. Forster. In his address, delivered at Edin- burgh in November, 1867, on Classical and Primary Education, Mr. Lowe expressed himself as follows : — PRIMARY EDUCATION IN 378 I would say, commence a survey and report upon Great Britain parish by parish ; report to the Privy Council in London the educational wants in each parish, the number of schools, the number of chil- dren, and what is wanted to be done in order to place within the reach of the people of that parish a sufficient amount of education. When that has been done, I think it should be the duty of the Privy Council to give notice to that parish that they should found a school, or whatever may be wanted for the purposes of that parish. If the parish found a school, then it would be the duty of the Privy Council to assist it, and that in the same way. as it assists the schools already in existence. If the parish does not agree to do what needs to be done, then I think there ought to be power vested in the Privy Council, or the Secretary of State, or some other great responsible public officer, to make a com- pulsory rate on them to found that school. I think the schools they found should be entitled to the same inspection and examination as the schools already in existence, and receive the same grants for results.’’ Here we have in precise and full outline the pro- visions actually contained in the Act with regard to the powers of initiation and interference possessed by the Privy Council for ascertaining the need and compelling the supply of education throughout the country. The super-addition of these provisions to the machinery for erecting and administering District School Committees (or Boards, in the language of the Act), provided by the Bills of 1851 and 1867, con- verted the local and permissive Manchester proposals into a national measure. In his official measure ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 379 Mr. Forster adopted exactly tire proposals as to com- pulsory education wliicli Mr. Bazley had desired to incorporate with the Bill of 1867, leaving the option of adopting the compulsory clauses with each locality resjoectively. In this sketch of the historical descent and origi- nation of the Act, I have connected closely and imme- diately together the Manchester and Salford Bill of 1 8 5 1 and the Bill of Messrs. Bruce, Forster, and Egerton (which was currently and shortly known in 1867 and 1868 as ‘'the Manchester Bill”), because the virtual identity of the two is a well-known fact, and is evidenced by the identity of local origin, of leading promoters, and of the essential ideas in the two Bills. I may, however, remind my readers that, between 1851 and 1867, two schemes had been introduced into the House of Commons, from opposite sides of the House, one by Lord John Russell in 1856 {Resolutions for Establishing a System of Educa- tion), and the other by Sir J. Pakington {The Borough Education Bill), both of which embodied the essential principles of the Manchester and Salford Bill, and helped to prepare the country and Parlia- ment for accepting the principles of Mr. Forster s Bill in 1870. To Manchester, therefore, we owe the line of ideas and influence, educational and political, which has brought the nation into the possession of the present Education Act. This claim has indeed of late been set up on behalf of Birmingham. It is curious that such a claim should be set up, considering how far the Birmingham League has made it its business to abuse the Act. It is, however, in no sense true. Even the compulsory element of the Act was not 38 o primary education IN derived from Birmingliam, but from Manchester. Birmingham would at once have made compulsion (on paj)er) universally imperative, and so would have failed, as must by this time be apparent to nearly all the world. Mr. Forster, by adopting compulsion in the Manchester form and degree, has succeeded so far more widely and thoroughly than could have been ho]3ed, and has prepared the waj?^ for farther and larger success. The Birmingham League, in fact, was only initiated in any distinct outline late in 1869 , while the important Manchester Conference on National Education — over which Mr. Bruce presided, and which (somewhat to Mr. Bruce’s alarm) pronounced particu- larly in favour of compulsion, while, in general, it went, on the subjects involved, in favour of the proposals included in '' the Manchester Bill ” — was held early in 1868 . To Manchester, accordingly, the origin and centre of the Free Trade movement, belongs also the credit of having originated and fostered the ideas to the prevalence of which the nation owes the present Education Act. Let me now proceed to state synoptically the prin- ciples which underlie the new Act. 1. The first is that of local responsibility, as dis- tinguished from, yet not superseding, but partly con- current with and partly subordinate to, national re- sponsibility, in regard to the primary education of the people. In the United States local responsibility, as we have seen, is all in all ; there is no national control or direction, there is practically no national respon- sibility, in regard to popular education. On the Continent generally, if not universally, the principle of local responsibility is recognised, and, indeed, the ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 381 primary responsibility for school provision rests with the commune (gemeinde) or parish, or with the muni- cipality. Other jurisdictions, however, concur, and are, in some respects, superior. The district or province, or the canton, and the. State educational bureau or department, have their authority, their share in inspection and direction, and some part of the financial burden to bear ; and for each country or canton there is a completely organized and har- monious system. Mr. Forster s measure is the first stejD taken in this country in the way of recognising and developing local responsibility and authority in the matter of popular education. The circumstances of England, however, have precluded the local authority, the local elective School Board, from occupying such a relation to popular education generally, as the corresponding authority holds in Continental countries. In Continental countries all the schools of popular education stand equally re- lated to the Local School Council or Board. But then on the Continent there is no such distinction as that in this country between voluntary religious schools and School Board schools, for the decisive reason that (except only in Holland), all primary schools are denominationally regulated and ad- ministered. The Church pastors are usually the local school inspectors, are always the chief acting school managers ; the school teachers are strictly iden- tified with the churches and congregations, are almost always virtually, if not expressly, church officers. If the Education Bill had passed as originally drawn, there would have been some resemblance to the same condition of things in the case of denomina- tional and denominationally managed schools adopted 382 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN by the School Boards. But this class of schools was not allowed to be constituted ; and, as things are, there is an entire separation between the School Board schools and voluntary schools. Over these- latter the School Boards have no jurisdiction. Whether it is desirable that, in this respect, matters should remain precisely as they are, is a point to which I shall presently advert. 2. The second principle I note in the Education Act is the principle of purely secular co-operation and direction on The part of the Central Government, coupled with the provision that the local authority, the School Board of each school district, whether such district be parochial, poly-parochial, municipal, or metropolitan, shall be at liberty to determine as it pleases respecting the religious instruction to be given in the schools, provided only that no denomi- national formulary be taught. By means of this twofold principle the Government has been enabled to make provision for the education of all the popu- lation, without either, on the one hand, compro- mising itself, as a central and imperial authority, with the teaching of religion, or with any payment on account of such teaching; or, on the other hand, adopting the principle of secular education as fit and adequate to meet the moral and intellectual wants of the people, in respect of school instruction. The first point, irresponsibility as to religious in- struction on the part of the Government, is secured by the provision in the Act (97 [1]) which declares that the Government ''grant shall not be made in respect of any instruction in religious subjects,” coupled with the clause in the code which provides on what distinct considerations and to what amount ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 383 the grants shall actually be made to schools on in- spection. The second point, freedom of the School Board to give religious instruction, is secured by the general powers given to School Boards, taken in connection with the absence of all directions or restrictions respecting religious instruction, except as regards the use of denominational formularies. A question has arisen in some minds whether the purely negative or neutral position now held by the Government in regard to the point of religious in- struction is not inconsistent with the principle maintained by all statesmen and by the Education Department up to the year 1870, that the moral element in education is the most important element, and Christian culture the great educational want of the country. The system of public elementary education for the people of England, which has been more or less in operation during the last generation, was, as I have shown from authoritative public documents, origi- nated between the years 1839 and 1846, by our Eng- lish statesmen, our Queen, and the Parliament of this realm, mainly from a sense of the deplorable con- dition of the lower working classes of this country in respect to common morality and all that belongs to the proper culture of a Christian nation. The grievous deficiencies of the population in respect to mental discipline and general instruction and enlight- enment were indeed felt to be a sore evil and loss, and, in themselves, also a cause of demoralisation. But yet the chief, the most pressing, the crying want of the country was declared to be a moral want. It seems to be thought by some that, in this respect at any rate, the basis and meaning of our national 3^4 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN system is now changed. There is no guarantee, it has been said, that religion will be taught in any manner or measure, directly or indirectly, in the public elementary schools of this country. A school may be Christian, but it may also be merely secular. And this appears to be regarded as equi- valent to an elimination of Christianity from the character of our national education. Plausible as this view may appear, when thus generally stated, it is certainly not correct. There is an excellent ancient caution in regard to the terms of an argument which I conceive to be illustrated in the present instance. Dolus latet in generalibus. General terms and propositions are apt to harbour fallacies under their vague amplitude. The fallacy in this case appears to me to be very near akin to that which argues that the disestablishment of the National Church would destroy the Christian character of the nation. I should be exceedingly sorry to say a word that might be fairly construed as tending to countenance the organized agitation in this country which aims to disendow and dissolve the foundations of the Church of England. But it is a weak and unwise argument which seeks to sustain that Church by alleging that the Christian character of our nation and our Government depends upon the maintenance of what is spoken of as the National Church Esta- blishment. The people and Government of the United States are not made either more or less Christian by the fact that in the States there has never been an Established Church. The Christian character of the Irish people has not been destroyed, nor has that of the British Empire and Government been impaired, by the mere act of disestablishing the ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 385 Irish Church. If, by general consent, the people of this country were to renounce all care about the Christian instruction and training of their children, they would prove themselves to have lost in general the Christian character. If the Parliament were to enact a law prohibiting all Christian instruction in public elementary schools, and imposing discourage- ments and disabilities on all teachers and teaching that made Christian truth and principle an essential element in education, such an enactment would, as it . seems to me, be an antichristian enactment, and go far to show that Parliament, in its collective capacity, was ruled by an antichristian spirit. But merely to leave Christianity, apart from State regulation or State payment, but yet free and welcome to work in co-operation with the State for the education, in the widest sense, and morally as well as intellectually, of the children of the country ; to leave to Christianity, unendowed, but also unembarrassed, such liberty of voluntary action as this, in the great enterprise of providing for the education of the nation, seems to me to involve no departure whatever from the true principles of Christian legislation. The same end is aimed at now by the promoters of the measure which last August became law as was aimed at thirty years ago by the Queen and Parliament. '‘It is her Majesty’s wish,” said Lord Russell more than thirty years ago, in his famous letter to Lord Lansdowne, " that the youth of her kingdom should be religiously brought up, and that the rights of conscience should be respected.” Such was then the spirit of our educational legislation ; its spirit is the same still. By the operation of the new Act the rights of con- science will certainly be more largely and strictly 386 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN secured tlian by the legislation of tlie interval between 1839 and 1846 ; at the same time I believe that a far wider extension will be given to the power of religious truth and influence in the bringing up of the youth of the country than was or could be done- in connection with that legislation. The measures which were conceived and initiated by Lord Russell, Lord Lansdowne, and Sir James R Kay-Shuttleworth thirty years ago, have, through their operation during the generation now drawing to a close, been chiefly instrumental in preparing the way for that growth of public opinion, and that condition of educational development, which have made a great new measure possible. But they were of necessity tentative, pre- liminary, and altogether limited and permi^ive in their scope and operation. The measures of the last generation of statesmen were adapted to the con- ditions of the time ; they were in fact, as was con- clusively proved by a series of legislative experiments, the only measures in the direction of public educa- tion for the people generally which could at that time have been passed, or which, having passed into law, could have been successfully carried into effect. The Act which passed last session, on the other hand, is adapted to the circumstances of the present time, but could not have been proposed in 1840. Par- liament found it utterly impossible thirty years ago to carry any general and comprehensive scheme for covering the country with public elementary schools entirely apart from all voluntary organizations. No system of such public schools could be organized on a common official basis, or managed from a common departmental centre. The country would neither tolerate a secular system, nor a composite system. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 387 nor an exclusive Anglican system. It was found, impossible to organize a central State Training Col- lege ; and the times were very far indeed from being ripe for local rates, for local Boards, and for the local settlement of the difficulties connected with the question of religious instruction. It only remained, accordingly, for the State to enter into relations with existing organizations for the education of the people. It could do nothing but go into partnership with the religious educational societies, agreeing to help, in proportion to the training of the teachers and the efficiency of the schools, those voluntary organizations which already had the work of popular education absolutely in their own hands, and endeavouring, in the capacity of a critical, wealthy, and influential friend, to improve to the utmost the quality of the education given, and to promote its spread among the masses of the people. This was accordingly the position in which the State had stood towards the question of education for a quarter of a century, up to the last session of Parliament. In this relation the State aided with its oversight, its counsel, and its pecuniary bounty the different Christian denominations in their educa- tional efforts, and the excellent British and Foreign School Society, which has been always sustained by various denominations. There were no other bodies to be helped. And these were all organized upon a basis at once voluntary and Christian. There were no secular organizations of educational zeal and benevolence to aid, none which the State could even be asked to recognise. The only schools, accordingly, which under the Minutes of Privy Council could be recognised or aided, were such as proceeded upon 388 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN the basis of religions instruction, and possessed a distinctly Christian character. If an association to promote schools on a purely secular basis were formed, it was not likely that Government would consent to help such an association, because if it was not originated in a spirit of undisguised hostility to Christianity, it was certain that such an association could not be adapted to meet the case of the children of the poorest and really neglected classes. If the State by its Central Department of Education, and as representative, which it could not but be, of the nation, had committed itself to the recognition and aid of such a purely secular association, it would have committed itself to a general principle, or else to a special purpose, utterly opposed to the deepest and most sacred convictions of the nation at large. The only principle, in short, on which it was possible for the State to proceed with any regard either to the convictions of the nation or to practical wisdom and policy, was to ally itself closely and exclusively with the Christian voluntar}^ asso- ciations for promoting the education of the people. But now, instead of there being one sole centre, the one national and metropolitan centre, from which alone all State help is to flow to public schools, and by which all the responsibility and direction which belong to the State in regard to such schools are to be administered, there is created a large class of public schools, principally maintained and imme- diately managed, apart from all voluntary contribu- tions and organizations, by popularly elected local boards, which boards have authority to raise and administer local rates for the support of such schools. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 3S9 The conditions and circumstances, accordingly, under which these schools exist are entirely new ; so new that the same rules of administration which regulated, and must still in the main continue to regulate, the re- lations of the State with voluntary schools, no longer apply, except very partially, to this class of schools. The problem is simplified. Its essential elements are contained within the limits of the locality for each particular case, and vary according to the locality ; and the solutions of the problem may vary according to the variety of cases. The responsibility also is limited. The principle of local responsibility and self-government is called in. London is to care and administer for London, Bristol for Bristol, Durham for Durham, not the Parliament of England for the collective education, and the individual management, of the schools of all England. Within assigned limits each local authority may do what may be deemed best in regard to the particular case with which it has to deal, without its being at all implied that the council of the whole nation, the imperial Parliament, could or Avould legislate for the whole kingdom on the same principles of administration which are thought to be practicable and expedient for any particular locality. As to this particular, if in respect to no other, England has gained a valuable hint from the United States. In the States the actual erection and the maintenance and management of each school are entirely in the hands of each several township, or municipality, or county, as the case may be. The outlay and responsibility begin and end there. All the funds are raised and spent within the district. In this way the difficulties of a complicated national problem are escaped, and each particular 390 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN locality adapts its school to the particular recjuire- ments of the place. Now, we have not in this country attained to such an elementary simplicity as this, in regard to our new class of School Board schools. Nor, I confess, do I desire that we ever should. In the United States the want of anything like an accepted and connected system of schools and of national education, the want of any national centre or department of education whatever, the grievous deficiencies of the country in respect of training colleges, of steady, settled, and thoroughly educated teachers, and of eflfective school examination and inspection, are points in the con- dition of the national education which we in England certainly need not regard with envy. The manage- ment of schools in that great country is much too absolutely local ; there is far too little of the truly national element in general oversight and in organized correspondence and unity. But yet it is a great advantage to have taken the leaf out of the American book which we find in the new Act. The principle of local responsibility and self-government is one of the most valuable principles rooted in the English soil. To many matters it has been applied ever since we were a nation. Of late years it has been extended to many new matters in its application and operation. In regard to no great question of national well-being will its application, as I trust, prove more fruitful in benefits than in regard to education. As respects the religious question, then, the Parlia- ment, that is, the nation, has now devolved the re- sponsibility in relation to School Board schools absolutely on the Local Board, with two guards only, viz., that no denominational formulary is to be used ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 39 ^ in any of the rate-supported schools, and that, as respects religious instruction, the Conscience Clause must be enforced. The Parliament within these constitutional limits trusts the local representative body — the School Board- — with the interests of re- ligion in the matter of education, even as the Parlia- ment itself is trusted in regard to the same matter by the nation at large. It is as reasonable and as venerable a principle to trust the general interests of religion in the matter of education in any given locality to the local representatives of the population freely chosen, as it is to entrust the same on the broad national scale to the parliamentary representatives of the people, freely chosen. The Local Board is fitter to exercise a judgment on w^hat are local needs in such a case than any centralised Government depart- ment could be ; while it is certain that no imperial Act could settle, by any subtlety of legislation, the details of a measure which should provide beforehand for all the exigencies which might arise in the thou- sand varieties of town and country school districts throughout the land. The event has proved the wisdom of the course adopted by Government and Parliament. The people have responded well to the trust imposed upon them by the Legislature. As to Christian principle and religious feeling, it may be doubted whether there are half-a-dozen School Boards which may not be favour- ably compared with the House of Commons. Whatever town councils may be, and into whatever hands the elections for town councils may have commonly fallen, the friends of Christian education, the representatives of the disinterested Christian zeal which has founded and carried on the tens of thousands of day and 392 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN Sunday schools in this country, have made their in- fluence paramountly felt in the election of the School Boards. The electors have settled the principle of Bible instruction as a household and universal prin- ciple to be observed in the public schools of this country. My conclusion, on the whole, is that the cause of religious, of Christian, education will lose nothing by the new Act. I trust it will gain much. The deno- minational schools will continue ; many of the volun- tary schools of the British and Foreign School Society will remain. The School Boards will be pervaded with a Christian spirit. The teachers of the new schools will be generally under the influence of Christian principles. The Bible will be taught, will in general be intelligently and reverently taught, will often be affectionately and prayerfully taught, in the new Board schools. Thus far there has been no departure in our legislation from the old landmarks of religious reverence and Christian principle. It is as true now as it was under the Privy Council Minutes of 1846, that a system of pervasive national education from which religion and religious teaching should be excluded, would not meet the national needs, and would be oj^posed to the claims of Christian faith and religion. Christians, who support the present Act, may still consistently maintain that to undertake to civilise the lowest million of English children by means of rigidly-restricted and low-ranged secular schools, children for the most part utterly without Christian instruction or influence at home, — that to provide by bare and rudimentary secular schools for the reclamation of the Arabs of the streets of the lowest residuum, as it is called, of our lowest classes, ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 393 is a project Avliicli sounds like a monstrous paradox wlien propounded by a Christian believer. The new Act has come to the rescue in our educational diffi- culties by the application to the problem of national education of the ancient principle of local responsi- bility and government, but it has offered no slight to the principle of religious instruction. It has done England the great benefit of creating many new centres of educational power and extension, thus enabling the country effectually to grapple with a hydra evil which could never have been mastered by any combination of agencies commissioned and re- gulated by one central bureau, by a Government department at Whitehall ; but the Act has not abro- gated the principles which have hitherto been re- cognised in the national administration of the Education Department, nor has it in any essential particular interfered with the relations between the central State Department of Education and the volun- tary schools of primary instruction which had been brought into alliance with the State. It has not un- fairly or oppressively interfered with the character and management of the denominational and British Schools. Rather, I think we may hope that they will be better for the Act and not worse. 3. The Act has introduced certain changes as respects primary education by means of voluntary schools. (1.) First, the Act has put an end to building grants. This, however, was done by way of amend- ment upon the Bill, in conformity with the resolution and the petition to Parliament of the representative Committee of the Wesleyan Methodists, themselves an educating denomination. They thought it emi- 394 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN nently desirable at this stage in the development of our national education to make an entire separation as to real property and legal control between the different Churches and the State in respect of school- buildings. They did not wish it to be possible for public money to be contributed towards the acqui- sition of what, to the vulgar apprehension, would always appear to be merely Church property. From this time forth not a halfpenny can ever be asked from Government towards the building of a Wesleyan, or a Church of England, or any other denominational or voluntary’’ school. (2.) The Act has made it imperative that in every school examined by her Majesty’s inspectors and receiving grants towards maintenance from the public revenue, the rights of conscience, in the fullest sense, shall be punctiliously respected, and the Conscience Clause publicly and conspicuously ex- hibited on the wall of the principal schoolroom. For twenty years the Government used their utmost influence in vain to induce the great National School Society of the Church of England to accept the prin- ciple of a Conscience Clause. Strong prejudice, blinded zeal, the unconscious intolerance bred by ancient prescription, by the principles of sacerdotalism, and by the atmosphere of caste, had made that Society impervious alike to the warnings and argu- ments of statesmen, to the threats of embittered enemies, to the remonstrances of those who, though not of the Anglican communion, had no desire to see the Church of England cast down and laid waste through the enmity and indignation which her own oppressions had excited, and to the reasonings and entreaties of many of her own most distinguished ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 395 sons. At length the just decree has gone forth, a decree which should have gone forth long years ago. The Conscience Clause must be fully accepted and absolutely respected, or no Government grant can be paid to the school, even though it be a school of the Church of England. The new Act has made such now to be the law of the land. (3.) The new Act has obliterated, so far as respects the part taken by Government in regard to the voluntary schools, all traces of denominational dis- tinction, and also of direct religious function and responsibility. There are no Government inspectors of Church of England schools, as such, or of Wesleyan or British schools as such. Every inspector will have equally under his eye all the inspected schools of the district assigned to him, of Avhatever character or denomination they may be, including the new School Board schools. It will be no part of the duty of any inspector to examine the children of any school in religious knowledge. Training colleges come, in this respect, under the same regulation as the inspected day schools. Church of England training colleges wdll no longer be examined of necessity, or as of right, by Church of England inspectors, nor will the inspectors examine the students in Church of England training colleges any longer in religious knowledge. Such examinations will, in future, be conducted in all colleges according to regulations determined, and by examiners appointed, by the authorities of the college, altogether apart from the Education Depart- ment at Whitehall. These regulations have disembarrassed the State and its Educational Department from all connection, 39 ^ PRIMARY EDUCATION IN in respect of religion or religious teaching, with the voluntary schools. They have abated, as far as was compatible with the vitality and efficiency of the schools, their denominational character, while they have invested them with a distinct and definite national character, and constituted them a true and integral element in a comprehensive and really national system of public schools. The Wesleyan schools in England are not called “National Schools,’' as are in Ireland the Non- Vested or denominational schools of Methodism, Presbyterianism, the Episcopal Church (late of England and Ireland), and the Eoman Catholics. But in their real character the denomina- tional schools in England are at least as well entitled to be styled National as the schools in Ireland, which are described as Non- Vested ; on which schools, in- stead of Presbyterian Day-school, or Wesleyan Me- thodist Day-school, or any other denominational designation. National School is inscribed as their legal style and title. It will be instructive, and at the present moment peculiarly seasonable, if I now proceed to follow out the remark which I have last made by a comparison between the English system of education as now amended and the Irish National System. Our denomi- national schools in this country have, by the changes in their relation to the State which I have just described, been conformed in several important respects to the condition of the Non- Vested National Schools of Ireland ; and where a difference still remains in the legal relations connecting the schools with the State, that difference will be found, if I do not mistake, to be such as proves the Irish schools ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 397 to be, in comparison of the English, excessively- favoured and indulged in their denominational character. 1. The Irish Non-Vested National Schools are under the protection of a stringent Conscience Clause, and are also, I believe, under undenominational inspection, although they are under the direction of denominational managers, and are taught by denomi- national teachers. But then it must be remembered that much the greater part of the maintenance of these Irish denominational National Schools’" is derived from the public revenue ; whilst, under the most favourable circumstances, it is impossible for any English denominational school to obtain a larger pecuniary contribution from the Government than one-half of the annual cost of maintaining the school, the average proportion of Government aid being considerably less than one-half ; and it must further be remembered that many of the non-vested schools of Ireland are both managed and taught by Eomish ecclesiastics or rdigieuses, and that of the rest a very large proportion are under the absolute government of the clergy of the various Protestant denominations, without any lay control or co-operation whatever ; whereas our English denominational schools cannot be taught by ecclesiastical persons, and are all of them required to be under the management of responsible committees in which the lay element must take its due place. Much has been said of the danger of conceding the denominational system to Ireland. Too much cannot be said, nor can too strenuous efforts be made, against conceding to Ireland such a denominational system as Ultramontane bishops demand for it, and 39 ^ PRIMARY EDUCATION IN as some statesmen on both sides of the House might a few years since have been disposed to concede to Ultramontane clamours and influence. This country, however, is now too enlightened to allow any Government to pass a measure for Ireland such as would never be granted to the clamours of the priest- hood in any Popish country of Europe. Just as Austria, after lying so long under the eclipse of its Concordat, has emerged from beneath its baleful shadow, and is redeeming its national education from the power of the priesthood, it would be unspeakable degradation, it would be suicidal folly, if the British Parliament were to suffer Ireland to come under a legalised bondage, worse even than that which was imposed by the Austrian Concordat, Whilst, however, opposed in this sense to the con- cession to Ireland of what would be understood there by the designation a denominational system,’’ it is necessary continually to insist that the present so- called National System of Ireland is denominational to a degree which far exceeds, in some cardinal par- ticulars, what has ever been known of day-school denominationalism in this country, and which, now that the new Act has come into operation, renders our guarded and abated denominationalism in this country absolutely national in comparison. To carry denominationalism in Ireland further than it has been already carried would be an excess indeed. 2. We have seen how essentially denominational are those Non- Vested schools of Ireland of which Government bears three-fourths of the expense. We have seen, also, that these Non- Vested schools consti- tute by far the largest proportion — constitute, let me say in plain arithmetic, five-sevenths of the Irish ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 399 National Schools. But it has also been shown that, on the whole, the Vested schools themselves can hardly be said to be less denominational or more truly national than the Non- Vested. It is true, indeed, that the Vested schools have been built at the sole expense of the State, and that the State bears nearly the whole annual cost ; but it would hardl}^ prove Wesleyan day-schools to be national institutions if all that could be said was that the Government had borne and was bearing nearly all the cost of them, while Wesleyan committees and teachers had the entire control of them. It is true, also, that these schools, built by the State, are vested in national trustees. But it is equally true that they are managed entirely and almost irresponsibly by denominational patrons, by patrons who are, in the great majority of cases, either Protestant clergymen or (much more commonly) Eoman Catholic priests. These intensely denominational patrons are not encumbered in their control and administration by any committees ; the schools are not under com- mittees. The patrons, it is true, are bound to respect the Conscience Clause, and if they infringe it, the parents can appeal to the inspectors and the National Board. But the patrons can dismiss the teacher at their own mere pleasure, without his having any power of appeal ; and in these Vested National Schools religious instruction of the most pro- nounced character is regularly given. The Eoman Catholic catechism, the Episcopalian and Presby- terian catechisms, all the catechisms, are taught by the different denominational teachers respectively under the direction of the patron, who himself, within certain hours, is at liberty to take what part 400 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN in the religious instruction he thinks proper. Such are the Vested schools of Ireland, the National Schools’’ par excellence. The Non-Vest ed and the Vested schools, seven thousand in number, make up all the National Schools of Ireland, with the exception of the few (twenty-seven) model schools,” so called, which are under the direct management of the central National Board at Dublin. But even in these schools, it should be remembered, the respective catechisms of the different denominations are taught, it being arranged, as far as possible, that where the popula- tion around is mixed, there should be two or even three teachers in the model school of different re- ligious persuasions, so that each may teach the catechism to the children of his co-religionists. 3. Let us compare now this Irish system of so- called '' National Schools ” with the English system, and judge which is the less denominational, which the more truly national. Both are composite systems. But look at the elements which make up the respec- tive wholes. Compare the Non- Vested or confessedly denominational schools of Ireland, in which are included the convent schools, with the voluntary schools of England, under the Conscience Clause of the new Act, remembering at the same time that Government hardly on an average contributes more than about one-third of the cost of maintenance in England, while in Ireland it contributes more than three-fourths. Compare the Vested schools of Ireland, managed by denominational patrons, taught by strictly denominational teachers, and in all of which denominational catechisms are taught, although they were built wholly, and are almost wholly sustained, out of the national revenue, with the School Board ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 401 schools of England, managed not by individual and intensely denominational patrons, but by popularly elected School Boards, and in which no denomi- national formulary can be taught. Nay, compare even the handful of model schools, of the purely national character of which we have heard so much, but in which the catechism of the Council of Trent, the Episcopal Church catechism, and the Presby- terian Assembly’s catechism, are taught, with our School Board schools. Plow absolutely is the com- parison on every ground in favour of the English system, as very far more truly national, and less deeply coloured and actuated by the sectarianism which belongs to intense and unchecked denomina- tionalism, than the Irish National System. As to national education, we ought to have large, various, manifold sympathies. The problem can never be solved on a narrow basis or in an in- tolerant spirit. It would be a great loss if all public elementary schools were to be emptied of denomi- national colour and character, to be conformed to one vague plan and pattern of very generic Christianity in teaching, and to be placed under the absolute control of School Boards. The truly liberal and cul- tivated mind has a repugnance to uniformity and stereotype, especially if the pattern stereotyped is one which can only be rendered in dim colours. We cannot but prefer variety, life, colours blended and contrasted. I rejoice in the principle of local respon- sibility and School Board action. But I rejoice cer- tainly not less, and with a homelier and more personal joy, in seeing Church action in regard to national education. I cannot forget that there would have been at this hour no public elementary educa- D D 402 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN tion for the working people of England, but for Church action and voluntary Christian activity ; that but for these there would have been no modern English science and art — the best and happiest in the world — of child-training ; that but for these there would now have been no supply of teachers for the School Board schools. I believe in School Board schools, in part, because I believe in the training which the teachers who will have to handle these schools must have received in the Christian colleges, most of them denominational. School Boards and their system of schools will probably tend to enlarge and liberalise the educational spirit of the denomi- nations and their colleges ; but, on the other hand, the denominational colleges, and the spirit of Chris- tian teaching as derived through the Christian Churches and their organizations, must be the sources of true teaching science, of trained sympa- thetic intelligence, of tested capacity and well-proved character, for the service of School Board schools. The highest inspiration for the work of teaching and training — the truest and most fruitful ideas and the noblest and most powerful motives — have been derived, and will continue to be derived, from the consecration, the pure and single purpose, the generous and kindly human sympathies, which are the fruit of living Christianity in principle and feeling united to the genuine teaching gift and faculty. The heart and soul of the educational movement for England must still be found in England’s Churches. The choicest and most in- fluential spirits among the brotherhood of teachers must still be gifted and enthusiastic Christian teachers. AVe may justly rejoice, accordingly, that whilst School ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 403 Board schools are to be multiplied, the distinctively religious schools of the various Christian Churches are to be left free — as is their right — to take the leading and distinguished part which befits them in the work of national education. Christian teachers, in express connection with Christian Churches, have been the chief educators of the world hitherto, have moulded every system of education worthy of the name, have kept alive the spirit of education, have carried its standard higher and higher from age to age, and they are not to be cashiered, they are not to be discouraged or disparaged now. This can never be done in Britain — so long as Scotland still reveres the name of Knox, and cherishes the memory of David Stowe ; and so long as in England the memory of Arnold is fresh and green. It is astonishing what trivial sayings often pass for pregnant and momentous maxims, and are quoted as such by men who have furnished themselves at the market of cheap commonplaces with the equip- ment necessary for the character of a summary critic and an ostentatious disciple of modern political philosophy and progress. A denominational sys- tem,’' it is said, can never be a national system ; therefore, if England is ever to take her true place among the nations of the world and in the van of modern progress, if England is ever to be a truly educated nation, denominational schools must be done away.” Now, as a matter of fact, there has hardly been an effective national system of education anywhere that was not denominational. It is granted, however, that in this country, a denomina- tional system (as such) could never be a thoroughly national system. But then no one has ever desired 404 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN to have a universal denominational system, nor that public elementary schools should be simply or purely denominational. There never has been in this country, nor even in Ireland, a purely denomina- tional system of national education. The British ’’ Schools, for example, were never denominational schools. The Conscience Clause and an effective Government inspection cannot but essentially modify, whether in England or Ireland, the denominational character of the schools in which they have place. The question, however, is not whether a denomina- tional system can be a national system, but whether schools managed by denominational committees in a catholic spirit, taught by denominational teachers, yet not in the interest of any denominational Shib- boleth, and worked by denominational energy — whether such schools, if at the same time invested with a national character, limited and regulated by national rules, and examined and inspected by national officers — may not form one element and one department in a grand national system of schools. The question is whether the Christian Churches, which in this country and on the Continent have thus far acted as the pioneers of progress in public and popular education, of every grade and kind, are henceforth to be dismissed from the State’s educa- tional service, and not permitted to bear their share in the great work which needs to be done. The idea which underlies much modern decla- mation and very much newspaper writing on the subject of education, is that all the elementary schools of the country should be essentially of the same pattern, and that gradations of schools should rise from the elementary school upwards to the ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 405 Universities, all tlie scliools of each grade to be essentially of the same pattern. But is this plan of stereotype life-like ? Is it in harmony with the variety, freshness, and spontaneousness of life ? above all, is it in keeping with the vast fecundity and various abundance of life which belong to a country like England, with its blended races, its variety of conditions, of modes of life and worship, of taste and prejudice and culture, its commerce, its manu- factures, its agriculture, its peasantry and its me- chanics, its trades and its professions ? The men who advocate this plan of stereotype would divide the whole country as it were into rectangular plots, and in every plot would fix a school of the same type. But such mechanical uniformity is incompatible with life or true greatness. Life, on the broad scale, in any great realm of God’s world, means multiplicity of types and kinds ; means congenial vital conditions and spontaneous development, vivid and various colouring, and boundless diversity of character and aspect in the living forms. Fit soil, true rooting, growth, colour, foliage, are all necessary if there is to be a living plant and living fruit, and for each plant these must all follow their own law, and be '' after their kinds.” So it must be in the matter of educa- tion, if education is to be real, a stream from living fountains, an array of forces and influences springing from true, and therefore manifold, spiritual energy, and adapted to meet the infinite needs, powers, and unfoldings of human hearts and faculties. Let u^ therefore have the public school in all its varieties ; of the denomination and of the School Board, of village and rural town, of the agricultural parish and the dense manufacturing population, of borough and PRIMARY EDUCATION IN 406 metropolis, of elementary and secondary and superior grade ; and let there be private schools, so they be open to public examination, and conducted by trained and certificated teachers ; and let there be our various Universities — all combining and har- monising into one grand national system. I call it a system, though it be not uniform, nor divisible into equal and symmetrical portions, just as there is a system and typical principles in the vege- table kingdom ; and as we speak of the stellar system, although the stars are not uniformly distri- buted, or equally graded, or coloured on any principle of regular alternations. This system of schools will include all that are open to public examination or inspection, that have trained and certificated teachers, and in which the rights of conscience are respected in the communication of religious instruction — all, in a word, which are conducted in harmony with the essential principles of the Act. As it seems to me, these principles are that teachers should be tested as to their competency, and that religious teachers must respect the consciences of parents and children, all else being left to be created or developed, whether by private persons or public bodies, whether by volun- tary combination or by School Boards, according to the ideas, the convictions, the impulses with which the heart and soul of the nation are replenished. We may fairly call this a system ; less systematic, less rigid, it is true, than the school system of Ger- many, but at the same time much more exact and connected than what may, by a compliment or figure of speech, be called the system of the United States ; and only the more fitted to the case of England, and the more satisfactory and congenial to the thoughtful ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 407 Englishman, the truly scientific or philosophic man of progress, because it thus occupies an intermediate place between the unbending method and rubric of Teutonic drill-mastery and the expedients of Trans- atlantic Anglo-Saxondom. Such a system as this is compatible with national life in its most varied development and its highest forms ; such a system is consistent with the rights of conscience and with national freedom in its fullest sense. It respects the conscience of the Christian as well as of the unbeliever ; of the man whose life, and that of his family, is identified with his Church, as well as of the man of cosmopolitan culture and philosophic isolation who sits loose to all Churches and all forms of creed or Christian fellowship. It is the only system in connection with which educational compulsion may be carried out without violating the rights of conscience. On this system whoever is compelled to send his child to school will be able to find a school to which he can send him without any violence being done to his conscience. It will be seen from the view which I have thus given of the main principles that define the recent Education Act, that I join with the great majority of the country in a high general approval of the measure. Nevertheless, it certainly can only be accepted as an important step in the right direction, well taken at the right time. The measure, regarded in itself, is doubtless imperfect, A Bill in itself much more perfect could not have passed, would not have been suitable to time and circumstances, and therefore would not have been a wise and good Bill for the year 1870. No one who studies the school system of our country, as now standing under the Act of 4o8 primary education IN Parliament, can fail to perceive that it is wanting in symmetry and in economy of power. As yet, the educational forces of the country are not perfectly marshalled ; the organization of the whole, on one harmonious plan, with perfect subordination of part to part, is by no means complete ; some principles have been but slightly brought into play which must before long become of chief importance ; some pro- vinces of activity have only been surveyed, which ought, without delay, to be brought under adminis- trative regulation ; the great metropolitan centre of direction and reference is more than ever, is alto- gether exorbitantly, surcharged with responsibility in details, whilst the functions of the mutually co-ordi- nate sub-centres are, as yet, too meagre and too mean ; a few positive mistakes and several practical defects in the new Act have been brought to light by the experience of the past two years. The Act, indeed, has, on the whole, worked wonderfully well ; the errors in it have proved to be very few" ; and of the undeniable defects, a considerable proportion were unavoidable in a piece of legislation which could not but, in part, be tentative, and which affected so vast a field of action ; some, indeed, w"ere defects the admission of which into the measure was necessary in order to secure its passage through Parliament, and the manner, with the necessity, of correcting which could only be learnt, and the lesson generally accepted, by means of actual experience in the working of the Act. But still defects are defects, and ought to be recognised as such. The Act cannot long remain in its present form. Symmetry and economy of power in administration, consistency and completeness of organization, are not only theoretical desiderata, but ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 409 practical necessities, if equity and efficiency, if sure and stable working, are to be realised in tbe educa- tional administration of tbe country. The most obvious and the most important defect in the present system is its excessive and ill-propor- tioned centralisation. It is, of course, folly to take up a general and undiscriminating objection against centralisation. Centralisation is the necessary condi- tion of high and masterly organization. But, besides the great central brain, there need to be ganglia distributed throughout the system. There must be local centres of sympathy and influence ; local sub- centres of intelligence, sensibility, and activity. In order to excite and sustain local interest, to develop and bring adequately under contribution local re- sources, to apply local knowledge and influence to the satisfaction of local demands and necessities, it is necessary that there should be everywhere district organization, with local centres or sub-centres. No sole imperial centre can be brought, apart from dis- trict organization and local centres, into effective relation with all parts of the country for all local j)urposes. There Avill be, without the subordinate local organization, a want of intimate local knowledge, of living local interest, of local confidence and con- tent, of adequate moral authority and influence within the locality. There is an element in the present system which needs only to be adequately developed in order to meet this necessity ; it will be anticipated that I refer to the District School Board. School Boards should, I cannot but think, and have for many years thought, be established everywhere, one for each school district. I would also bring all existing public or quasi-public 410 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN elementary schools within the district into relation with these Boards. As to these points I heartily agree with the suggestions of a representative committee of my own Church for the amendment of the Act, which, in January last, were laid before Mr. Gladstone. There are in this country many hundreds of day- schools, chiefly village schools, which, while allowed to take their place as schools for the use of all deno- minations, are administered strictly and exclusively on the principles and in the interest of one denomi- nation. They receive no annual Government grant, and are not under Government inspection, though, by-the-bye (and this is a noteworthy point), a con- siderable number of them did, when first established, receive building grants from Government. Eeceiving no annual grant, and being under no State inspection, they are not under any Conscience Clause. But they were especially inspected two years ago, and are admitted as '' efficient ’’ schools, in the general census of educational supply for the country. Though unin- spected, they are '' efficient,” and therefore they take position as quasi-public elementary schools. If they were not there, or if they were not reckoned as effi- cient,” or if they were discounted as not ‘‘ suitable,” their place would have to be supplied by an inspected voluntary school, under the Conscience Clause, or by a Board school. They cumber the country parts of this land with a great multitude of narrow, sectarian, small seminaries, whatever exceptions there may be, here and there, to this general description. Very commonly these are the solitary schools in a village. ♦ See the Report of the Wesleyan Committee on Education, December, 1872. Published by the Wesleyan Conference Office, 1873 (last page). ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 41 1 The Wesleyan Committee proposes to take effectual dealing with these ; either they must accept the Con- science Clause, or they must vanish in the public account. On the ground of unsuitableness, they must be discounted from the roll of '' efficient schools. It appears to me that this demand is not only reasonable but necessary, that it is justified by the Vice-Presi- dent of the Council’s own definition of what he understands by the suitableness of a school. In a letter to the Honorary Secretary of the Worcester Diocesan Board of Education, dated August 8th, 1870, Mr. Forster uses the language I now quote : — Efficient and suitable provision will be held to be made for a district, when there is efficient elementary school accommodation within a reasonable distance of the home of every child who requires elementary in- struction, of which he can avail himself on payment of a fee within the means of his parents, without being required to attend any religious instruction to which his parents object.” The requirement made by the Methodist Committee is in strict harmony with this language used by the equitable Vice-President. But there is another branch of this question. Who is to guarantee the continued efficiency, regarded merely as schools of elementary instruction, of these schools — which, on a certain somewhat loose inspection, were pronounced ''efficient” two years ago? Many of them, there can be no doubt, were only in a very humble sense efficient. All of them are liable to degenerate. Should not School Boards, by means of their local inspectors, be responsible for the continued " efficiency ” of these schools ? The dread of adding too heavily to the rates will be sure to prevent the 412 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN Board inspector from being too stringent in his re- quirements. The Wesleyan Committee would also, and with evident propriety, constitute the School Boards the guardians of the parishioners in regard to the Conscience Clause and its observance in these schools. By being invested with such functions, the dignity and value of the Board could not but be greatly increased. Not content with thus developing the power and character of the District Boards, the Wesleyan Com- mittee propose to give the Boards certain functions also in reference to inspected schools within their districts. Of course the methods and results of in- struction in such schools are absolutely in the hands of her Majesty's inspectors of schools and of the National Department of Education. But the Govern- ment inspector only pays a passing visit to the school once or twice a year, and in the interval the managing committee — which is often negligent, and which cannot in any sense represent the public — is the only body which has any sort of authority in the school. The Wesleyan Committee propose that, /'inasmuch as the School Boards are responsible for compelling the attendance of children at such elementary schools, inspected or " efficient," as exist within the respective School Districts, it ought to be within the com- petency of such Boards to take cognisance of the sanitary condition of such schools, of the general manner in which they are conducted, including, in particular, the observance of the Conscience Clause, both in its letter and spirit, and of any complaints as to these points which may be made by parents of scholars, and to make representations accordingly to the school managers or the Education Department, ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 413 or to both of these authorities, as the case may require/’ By these proposals the District Board would be raised to a position of great service and responsibility. Even Avhere its own schools might be very few — or if there were no Board Schools — its functions would be important and extensive. It would have something more to do than — as would often under the un- amended Act be the case, if School Boards became general — merely to compel children to attend school, whilst without any charge, authority, oversight, or pow'er in any respect, with regard to the schools to Avhich they make their children go. In the way in- dicated by these proposals the needful requirement of local organization and responsibility, combined with decentralisation to a certain extent, would be accom- plished. It seems desirable, indeed, that, in certain respects, our English system should be yet more highly organized than has now been indicated. The French educational economy, in the manner of combining, harmonising, and mutually limiting, the action or responsibility of the town or the commune, the pro- vince, and the national centre, appears to be most ably planned and adjusted. Of course all the parts of the French mechanism are too much under the control and manipulation of officials nominated by the Government. But this fact does not affect the sym- metry and excellence of the plan, so far as respects the points to which I have referred. If, however, we cannot as yet see our way to county or provincial circles of education, or to the interposition in some way, between the School Board Districts and the Govern- ment centre, of large territorial divisions for educa- tional purposes, let us at least have, with as little 4H PRIMARY EDUCATION IN delay as possible, District School Boards universally established and placed in relation with all existing public or quasi-public schools of primary education. I have nothing to say in respect to the 25 th clause of the Act, regarded apart from the 17th. The merely sectarian outcry about the former of these clauses may be left to die out, as it has almost done. I may say that the principle of these two clauses, to pay or to remit the fees of indigent scholars, according to circumstances, is old enough, and has been acted upon, without creating any bitter- ness or any difficulty, both on the Continent generally and also in Australia. But in this country the opera- tion of these clauses was first of all assailed and interrupted by an outbreak of sectarian animosity against the sect which possessed the great majority of the schools, and has since been impeded by the much more serious, the permanent and truly formidable, difficulty which arises from the character and influence of our national pauperism. Public opinion seems to be settling fast to the conclusion that, as respects these two clauses, the English Education Bill should have been framed as the Scottish Education Act, on the motion of Mr. W. H. Smith, M.P. for West- minster, was, in the discussion, so amended as to stand ; that is to say, that all cases of alleged inability to pay for the education of children should be re- ferred to the Poor Law Guardians to investigate, and, if proper, to relieve by payment of the fee to the school to which the children are sent.''' * Scottish Education Act, 69th Section. See Appendix D at the end of the volume. Since the text was in type, Mr. Forster’s Amend- ment Bill has been introduced, which concedes the principle of the Scotch Act, but, inconsistently, leaves the 17th clause in the Act. Probably this will be remedied in Committee. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 4^5 Cases of alleged poverty are of two classes ; there are those delicate and deserving cases, which it is every way fit and most desirable to meet by voluntary aid and private charity ; and there are those which, because of the unworthiness, or, if not unworthiness, the coarse commonness of the indigent families, or because of the grave extremity, and (in either alter- native) of the probable permanence, of the indigent necessity, ought to be relieved out of the public poor- rates. Now the School Boards are not adapted to investigate and discriminate between the merits of the vast crowds of cases which are sure to come before them as soon as ever it is made known that they are prepared to provide gratuitous education for needy families. Plausible, seductive mothers, who know well how to dress up their cases, will come in troops before the Board Committees, to obtain immunity from payment of fees. The money saved will be some inducement ; the pleasure of pleading a successful suit before the gentlemen of the Board, or of the Board’s Local Committee, will be a yet stronger inducement. To many plausible, talking women of the least meritorious sort, the opportunity of stating a case before a board of gentlemen is an exciting variety in life ; it is a sort of public appearance, and it affords scope for ingenuity and the gift of speech. This is the case, more or less, everywhere, but especially in London. The two organizations which are tho- roughly fitted for the work of investigation are the Charity Organization Society and the Board of Poor Law Guardians. All cases which it is possible to sup- pose may be fit and worthy cases for wise charity should be remitted to the voluntary Society for investi- gation, and by means of that Society, and its connec- 4i6 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN tions, provided for, if found worthy. Under such cir- cumstances, with such an important and recognised part to play in the beneficent regulation of charitable effort and of the education of the poor, the Charity Organization Society would never want funds. I can imagine few things more valuable than that it should be linked with such a public department as the School Board. Cases rejected by this Society as unworthy of special charitable aid, and all cases which are evidently, on the face of them, unworthy, or coarsely common, or likely to be grave and perma- nent, should be remitted for investigation to the guardians of the poor It is their business to test poverty, to sift applications for relief, to detect and reject cases of imposition. Such a business requires great and special knowledge and experience, and special agents and organization. The Poor Belief Department already possesses all these ; the School Boards have them not, and are not organized to obtain them. Are they to become a second Poor Belief Department ? are they to add this to their other functions ? Unity, consistency, economy, all demand that the work of legal investigation should all be done by the authorities whose chief and proper task it is to do such work. The Scottish Education Act makes provision for this. I cannot doubt that the English Act should be amended in the same sense. In several points of detail the compulsory pro- visions under the Act are seriously defective, and must certainly be amended, especially as to the evidence which is to be held admissible against a parent. But I shall not enter upon such points of detail. I think it more important, with my lessen- ing space, to say that, without indirect legislation to ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 417 sustain and encompass the direct compulsory pro- visions of the Act, the work of direct compulsion can never be accomplished. As yet no thorough work of compulsion has been accomplished, even in London ; in many large towns compulsion is as yet but a threatening word. The mere word and threat will soon cease to inspire awe. Where, as in some parts of London, attemj^ts are being made really to carry out compulsion, the parents will soon find out the loose meshes in the Act and the bye-laws, and will sometimes be able to defy, and sometimes to evade, the Board’s attempts at prosecution. It may be feared lest, in this respect, matters may probably be worse rather than better in twelve months’ time. The at- tendance at the London Board schools shows that the most important part of compulsion, which is to secure regular attendance, is as yet an utter failure. The absentees at the Board schools, on an average, number forty per cent., a degree of irregularity much beyond that of voluntary schools. So things are, in my judgment, likely to remain, unless large and comprehensive measures of indirect legislation are brought in to supplement and sustain direct compulsory legislation. In the language of .one of the suggestions of the Wesleyan Committee, '' the principles of the Factory, Factory Extensions, and Workshops’ Kegulation Acts ought to be applied to all classes of children employed in labour,” and no child or young person should be allowed to work either half time or full time without having, in either case, passed an appropriate examination, in a manner satisfactory to one of her Majesty’s inspectors of schools.” I know perfectly well that even this supplementary legislation would prove to E E PRIMARY EDUCATION IN 418 liave its leakages, its very wide and loose meshes, and could not always be applied ; but it would greatly help, both morally and by its direct legal pressure. We need all manner of helps and aids to get the work done. Where one Act fails, another may succeed. The indirect legislation would cause a large part of the community to learn that, in order to get benefit from their children s labours, they must secure their children s education. The leaven of such a lesson would operate most beneficially in influencing the whole population. The London Board, and other Boards, have acted on this principle in their bye-laws. The principle ought to be em- bodied and enforced as statute law for the whole land. When all is done, however, that law and adminis- tration can do, many children will still be unreached. Berlin, Hamburg, New York, agree to teach us this lesson. In the '' lowest deep ” that School Boards can reach, there will still be found '' a lower deep.” “ There will still remain ” — I close with the weighty words of the Wesleyan Committee — a large number of vagrant and neglected children — the very class which most urgently needs Christian help and educa- tional elevation — whose case can only be met by the efforts of voluntary philanthropy, assisted, under proper regulations, by grants from public funds.” My space will not allow me to deal in detail with the case of Scottish education or the Education Act for Scotland. The ancient parochial system provided excellently for the wants of Scotland, until the huge ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 41 q growth of modern towns had made it inadequate for such towns. The teachers, also, it must be said, though frequently excellent, were not seldom of antique style ; while the fact that the aj)pointment of parish schoolmaster was regarded as a man’s right for life, and was a post indeed from which an in- competent or unsuitable teacher could only witli difficulty be removed even by legal process, led to the retention in office as parochial schoolmasters of not a few most improper persons. Under the Privy Council Administration Scotland had been admitted to the same benefits as England, and, more fortunate and more resolute than England, had never been obliged, as to several important points, to submit to the special regulations introduced by the Eevised Code in 1862 . It had successfully contended against the levelling principle of payment on the mere basis of the ‘'Three R’s.” The Privy Council had done much for the whole country, but much especially for the large towns. Religious and ecclesiastical distinctions had never interfered greatly with education in Scot- land. All classes of schools strictly respected the consciences of j>arents. Roman Catholic children went in great numbers to Presbyterian schools. The Presbyterian schools of the various denominations, constituting the immense majority of schools in the country, were undistinguishable from each other by any sign or token in their teaching or management. In all these schools the same doctrine was taught, the same catechism — the shorter cate- chism of the Westminster Assembly — was learnt by the children, the same school methods were in use. The establishment of a national primary system, under such circumstances, was a task free from many 420 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN difficulties which beset the case of national education in England. The new system inaugurated by the Act of 1872, builds on the old foundations, on the parochial schools, throughout all the country, especially the agricultural parts, and on the denominational schools under the Privy Council. '' The Scotch Education Act,’’ says Lord Napier and Ettrick, “ comprises three capital features ; a general system of local (Scottish) management, a general rate, and universal obligatory attendance. It is complete and absolute where the Act for England is partial and facultative. These provisions are, however, raised upon an old basis, and could not have been established without it ; the School Board is a transformation of the heritors’ meeting ; the rate is an expansion of the former charge upon the land ; and the rule of compulsion has been adopted in deference to the demand of public opinion, trained by religion and prudence to recognise the obligation of the parent to provide for the education of his child.”"" In Scotland the School Boards are under no re- striction as to what religious instruction shall be given in their schools. As a matter of fact, it is universally understood that, with very few, if any exceptions. School Board schools will be conducted precisely as all Presbyterian schools, of whatever variety, have heretofore been conducted, that the Bible and the Westminster Catechism will be taught in them. One consequence of this will be the im- mediate transfer to the School Boards of the great bulk of the schools belonging to the various denomi- * Address at the opening of the annual meeting of the Social Science Association at Plymouth, 1872. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 421 nations. The Established Kirk, under the old law, had virtually the control of the parochial schools. These Avill now be transferred to the School Boards, in conformity with the new law. The inducement to other Presbyterian denominations, after this, to main- tain separate schools will be small indeed. All they want is to be found at the Board School. The denominations may, however, if they see good, still retain their schools under the Privy Council, and apart from the Scottish educational centre. The few Episcopalian schools, or a considerable proportion of them, and the Koman Catholic schools, may still be so retained, the latter, perhaps, permanently. Though there will be a general school rate through the country to meet needful expenses, the Scottish schools will not be free. The principle of free edu- cation, indeed, has never found favour in Scotland. There is one very special feature in the Scottish Bill. The School Boards have power, when this may appear needful or very convenient, in order to meet the case of small and detached populations, to take under inspection and to aid with grants on examination, private elementary schools, whether denominational or otherwise. I have already, in writing of the English Act, referred to the principle of educational relief for the poor in Scotland. In applying compulsion, the parochial boards will co-operate with the School Board, so far as to investigate and to charge themselves with the payment of fees, in all cases of indigence calling for pecuniary aid. It is also made penal for employers of labour to have children in their employment, between certain ages, who have not obtained a certain modicum of education. 42 2 PRIMARY EDUCATION IN ENGLAND, ETC. It is evident that, under the operation of this measure, primary education in Scotland will soon attain to a high degree of unity and consolidation. Scotland has always been one of the best-educated countries in Europe. It may be expected that, before long, it will more than rival Germany, Switzer- land, or Holland.'^' But the national school education of Scotland, as of England and of Ireland, cannot be effected — • could not een be organized — on the secular principle. Compulsory and universal secular education is repu- diated by common consent throughout the three kingdoms of our empire. * In Appendix D at the end of the volume the chief distinctive provisions of the Scotch Act are given, and also of the New Code, which materially varies from the English Code. Since the foregoing pages were in type, Mr. Forster’s small but judicious Education Act Amendment Bill for England has been introduced into Parliament. So far as it goes, it is in harmony with what I have written. It provides for the compulsory education, at the expense of the rates, of all out-door panper children, numbered now, it appears, at nearly 200,000. (Cf., p. 324.) It deals with clause 25 on right principles and improves the law as to evidence of absence from school. Probabl)^ more could not have been wisely attempted at present. No one knows better than Mr. Forster that much more ought to be done. CHAPTER XL A FOEECAST OF THE FUTUEE. ET US first try to understand what permanent form public elementary education will have assumed in this country in the nearer future of ten years to come. I assume that pupil teachers will remain as a permanent feature in our English popular system, although, for reasons indicated in the eighth chapter, I think it may be taken for granted that the age of apprenticeship will have advanced from thirteen to fourteen. We are bound also to assume that the regulation will, after next spring, be carried into effect, of which the Government have now a second time given notice, by which the proportion of pupil-teachers in all large schools will be materially reduced, assistant- teachers being substituted for them in the ratio of one assistant for two pupil-teachers, so that there never shall be more than four pupil-teachers to one certificated master or mistress in any school ; an assistant-teacher being required either to be certih- cated or to have completed a term of pupil-teacher- ship, or, not having been a pupil-teacher, to have passed a Queen s Scholarship’’ examination, such as qualifies for entrance to a Training College. 424 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, I assume, further, that, as now, the schools being examined by Government inspectors every year, the standards of examination will be graduated for six successive years, six years (from seven to thirteen) being the full term of school attendance which it is hoped will be ke|)t by the children after leaving the infant-school. I presume, moreover, that so long as Government grants are made on examination ''passes,” it will be considered a needful safeguard against the repeated presentation of the same chil- dren in the same standard in successive years, and a necessary guarantee of real progressive education, that the children should be presented for examination year by year in successive standards according to their age ; although such a mechanical rule of uni- formity is in itself quite indefensible. I dismiss as not deserving criticism, and as a curious instance of the slavish copying of German faults and short- comings as if they were merits, the suggestion recently thrown out at a very small " Conference ” on Education at the Society of Arts, that the six standards should be reduced to three. Such a step would be a distinct retrogression, and could only lead to inefficiency and confusion. I assume, further, that, except in the case of schools for special classes — as, for instance, for ragged or semi-criminal children — and of village schools,- large schools of several hundreds will be the rule, and small schools, schools of less than 150, the exception ; that junior schools, for children from seven to ten, will often be "mixed,” but senior elementary schools, for children from ten to thirteen, seldom or never ; i)ut yet that, among the schools frequented by children of the superior artisan and the small shop- A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, 425 keeper classes, especially superior voluntary schools, there will often be found excellent mixed schools, for children of all ages, except infants ; that, to sum up, in the large towns a group or system of schools will most commonly consist of three departments, for infants, for boys, and for girls, but that it will sometimes consist only of two, an infants’ and a mixed school ; while, on the other hand, it will some- times, especially when the number of children pro- vided for is very large (from 1,000 to 1,500), include four departments — viz., infants, junior mixed, senior boys and senior girls, or even five, viz., in- fants, junior boys, junior girls, senior boys, and senior girls.'" Of course, when a mixed school is under a master, a sewing mistress for the girls will be necessary, to attend on certain afternoons each week. In the case of village mixed schools I anticipate that, before long, female teachers will generally be employed, as being both cheaper and better adapted for the work. The village school Avill often be the only school for both sexes and all ages, including infants. For such a school a mistress will evidently be much more suitable than a master. A\Tien the village is populous enough to sustain two schools, an infants’ and a mixed school, the mixed school is not likely to be large, nor the boys to require advanced instruction, and a vigorous and able mistress will both cost less and do better than such a master as alone would be likely to be obtainable for a small village school. I do not at this moment touch on the question of School Boards or Board Schools in the future, nor * I print, in Appendix C, the Educational Scheme of the London School Board. 42 6 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. shall I attempt to guess in what proportions the rate-built and the voluntary schools will co-exist. But, apart from any such questions, it appears to me that in the near, though not perhaps the nearest future — some ten years hence, I would say — our school arrangements will have taken some such form as the following : — In large schools the teacher and assistant-teacher will probably both be certificated, and thus the number of certificated teachers to be kept up by supplies from the Training Colleges will be considerably larger than the number of public elementary schools, although, perhaps, not larger in proportion to the number of children under instruc- tion than it is now, inasmuch as the average number of children attending each school will be much larger than at present ; large schools will be the rule, the school will often be very large, and small schools will be the exception. The number of pupil-teachers coming forward from the schools to the colleges will have fairly adjusted itself to the demands of these colleges, which, in their turn, will supply a stable proportion of teachers yearly to meet the settled and solid demand of the country. As an ordinary rule, the student who has completed his two years’ term of training at college will not be placed at once in charge of a large school, but will either obtain a small school, or be placed as an assistant in a large school. Then, again, as small schools are likely gradually to be greatly reduced in number — even in villages the one school for infants, boys, and girls, under an able trained mistress, with a female ex-pupil-teacher to take charge of the infants, being likely to supersede the two schools, under a master and mistress respectively, which are A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, 427 now so common — it appears probable that, before many years are over, nearly all students who have completed their training at college will proceed to continue their training, in a sense, and to acquire experience, as assistants under experienced teachers in large schools. This result, which I see distinctly rising into view at no great distance, will tend to meet one of the objections most frequently alleged against our present system, namely, the immaturity of the teachers who go forth, at twenty years of age, often to undertake the responsible task of conducting a large school, and of both teaching and training scores of young individualities, quick and teeming centres of personal faculty and power, of feeling, and energy, and influence. Not only, moreover, under the regulations and adjustment which I seem thus to foresee, will students, by adding to their training, as pupil- teachers and in college, the further training and experience gained by them as assistants in large schools, be much better fitted to enter upon the ultimate responsibilities of their profession, but also in each separate school, the proportion of age and experience brought to take charge of the responsible task of training the young will be largely increased. Instead of one chief teacher and five or six pupil- teachers to a school of 250 children or upwards, there will in such a school be two responsible teachers of some proved competency, not only as to power of instruction, but trustworthiness in trainingf, assisted by three or four pupil-teachers. It is generally understood, indeed, that the Education Department intend, as soon as circumstances will allow, still further to increase the proportion of as- 42 8 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, sistant teachers ; so that, ultimately, no one certi- ficated teacher shall have more than from 120 to 160 children under his charge, without having a qualified assistant. Here, however, a question arises as to the supply of trained teachers in the future to do the work of public elementary education. Parliament has deter- mined that the people shall be educated, and has taken measures for providing the requisite number of schools. But without trained and able teachers school-houses would be of little use. The new Act has done nothing towards providing such teachers, although the number of inspected schools in the country may perhaps, before very long, be increased by one-half. What, then, are the prospects of our national education in that respect ? This is a natural question to ask, and it is well that a satisfactory answer to it can be given. For the purposes of the calculation I am about to make, Scotland may be taken along with England, the Government certificate running equally in both countries, and many teachers being interchanged between the two. The high orthodox calculation is that one in six of the population ought to be at school. If this were the case. Great Britain would be a thoroughly well school-educated island. This standard is unquestionably a high one, as compared with the school attendance of other countries. This, however, is inclusive of all schools and of all children. Of the half-time children two go for one in school attendance. The children at other than primary schools also, must be taken into account in any estimate made of the number of children in the country to be reckoned as school attendants at public J FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. 429 elementary . schools. In calculating, moreover, the actual number to be taught at one and the same time in the primary schools of the kingdom, it will be necessary to make a further subtraction — besides the allowance on account of children in secondary schools, or private schools, or taught at home, and on account of half-timers— for those who are absent becaTise of sickness or for other necessary reasons. In every large school a certain average discount on attendance must always be reckoned upon from such causes, even under a compulsory regime. The sum of the deductions on all these various accounts will certainly not be over-estimated if it is set down at twenty-five per cent. Allowing this deduction, the actual number of children to be provided for, as able to be present at one time in the public primary schools of the kingdom, will be reduced to one in eight instead of one in six. Or, in other words, if one in six are to be under regular instruction in some way or other, one in eight ought to be in actual attendance in public elementary schools. Practically, indeed, this reduced estimate is altogether excessive, because it supposes that, except private or secondary schools, all others will be inspected primary schools, under certificated teachers, i.e. “ public elementary schools ” in the sense of the Education Act. Any such result as this can certainly not be anticipated as likely to come about within any assignable period in the nearer future, if it should ever come about, which to me, I confess, seems more than doubtful. Pure voluntaryism in education, and free educational enter- prise, will die very hard, if they die at all I hope and believe they will never die. However, I am content for the purpose of my present calculation to 430 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. take the number of children in actual attendance to be provided for at one in eight. One in eight is Sir James Kay Shuttle worth’s estimate. The population of Great Britain at the last census was 26,072,284. One-eighth of this number will be very nearly 3,260,000. Let us allow one certificated teacher for 120 children on an average ; the number of teachers required — required, let it be observed, in the far future towards which our educational system is suj^posed by some to be moving, when there shall no longer be any uoinspected National School or other voluntary quasi-public elementary school, and when all private elementary schools, for the working classes, shall have been done away — the total number required will be 27,166. If we take the wear and tear of the profession, at what appears to be the proper proportion for the future, when retirements from the profession will be much less frequent than in the past, viz. six per cent., the number of teachers needed yearly to fill up vacancies by death and retirement will be 1,630. At seven per cent, for wear and tear the number needed would be 1,900. At the present time the number of certificated teachers is 17,377 ; it seems hard to imagine an increase within the next ten years of more than fifty per cent., which would bring the number up to 26,065. It must be remembered that the average number of children in attendance at each school will be much larger in the future than in the past. Small schools with fewer than 150 children will be comparatively rare. On the whole, it cannot well be doubted that in any working estimate as to the number of inspected teachers likely to be needed at any time for which we could now prudently attempt A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. 431 to forecast a calculation — ten years to come would seem to be about the limit of such a time — 27,000 would be a liberal estimate. After five years have passed away, there will probably be little building of new^ schools for many years, and whatever increase there may be in the number of schools and teachers thereafter needed may be expected to arise very gradually, so gradually as to be met by the natural growtli of the teacher supply. Of course the popu- lation will be continually increasing ; but this may be left out of account in our present calculation, both because there will beyond doubt be much overbuild- ing at first, and because colleges and all things naturally groAV with increase of population and national dimensions and resources. Let us now recur to the calculations already made. At six per cent, the wear and tear of 27,000, or, to be exact, 27,106, teachers will be 1,630, at seven per cent. 1,900, a most ample allowance for the next dozen years. Now from what sources will this supply have to be met ? By no means only from Training Colleges. 1 have pointed out that there are and will be, as there ought to be, two ways of entering the profession, one through the Training Colleges, usually, but not necessarily, after apprenticeship, the other by appren- ticeship and assistantship, or by Queen’s Scholar- ship” (Training College Entrance) examination and by assistantship, there being a final examination (for cer- tificate) between assistantship and full rating as a certi- ficated teacher, whether in the capacity of chief teacher or still as an assistant (but now also certificated) teacher. A large percentage of the pupil-teachers are now entering the profession by this avenue ; and 432 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. the number of those who so enter is likely to be per- manently large in future. Taking these figures and calculations into account, nothing surely can well be more certain than that a Training College supply of certificated teachers amounting yearly to 1,600 or 1,700 at present, and capable, without any serious difficulty, of being gradually augmented in a few years to 2,000, would more than meet the requirements of public elementary schools for Great Britain. Several hundreds a year additional might be safely counted on as coming into the profession by way of apprenticeship, assistant- ship, and examinations. The total supply, from the first, could scarcely be less than 2,000 a year, and would probably be much greater. It would soon rise to several hundreds more than this. The number of students who left the Training Colleges last Christmas was about 1,600, besides several hun- dreds of ex-pupil-teachers who took charge of small schools or became assistants. The supply of teachers has, during the current year, been in excess of the demand. Teachers have not been able to find schools ! No doubt the number that left the Training Col- leges last Christmas was somewhat larger than it would otherwise have been, because of an excep- tional permission granted to Training Colleges by the Education Department, to send out at the Christmas of 1870, 1871, and 1872, students of only one year s training into schools. This was a provision intended to meet the special and initial pressure for teachers arising out of the demands suddenly created by the new Act. The indulgence, however, came to an end last Christmas ; and, in A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. 433 future, the old rule will obtain. As a rule, all teachers will be trained for two years, except such as have received a special training as infant-school mistresses. With this exception. Government will make no grant in aid of the expense connected with the training of any teacher, unless such teacher shall have been resident and under training two years at the Training College. Still, the number of trained students who will leave the various Training Colleges next Christmas will certainly not be less than 1,700, as several colleges have lately been built or enlarged. Some also are now in course of building or enlarge- ment. For some years to come, accordingly, we may look for a still increasing number of trained teachers to issue from the colleges. The 1,700 will probably soon rise nearly to 2,000. A few years ago it was thought by some that Govern- ment would have to take some special step in order to provide the needful permanent supply of Training Colleges and of teachers under training. It is now evident that there is no such necessity. Additions, as I have said, are now being made to our Training College provision and capacity. But, apart from such additions, the number of trained teachers now issuing each Christmas from the colleges would, in combination with the other source of supply, through apprenticeship and assistantship, more than suffice, if all the country were already, once for all, supplied with schools and teachers, to keep up the supply from year to year.- There are far more than enough of pupil-teachers, also, coming forward, apart from all others who might desire to enter the profession, to * A year ago the colleges were capable of providing for 3,336 students. F F 434- A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. keep the colleges full. Indeed, the altogether exces- sive force of pupil-teacher candidates pressing for admission to the Training Colleges — candidates who have completed their apprenticeship as pupil-teachers — would, if it were to continue from year to year, be a serious inconvenience. At present this excessive supply is absorbed, as I have intimated, in special ways. Pupil-teachers who have completed their apprenticeship are admissible, instead of certificated teachers, immediately to take charge of small schools with fewer than sixty scholars. Many of the existing certificated teachers of such schools being at present needed to meet the demand for teachers to supply the new schools opened throughout the country, the ex-pupil-teachers eome in conveniently to fill up the vacancies in the small schools. Certificated assistant- teachers, also, who become principal teachers, have their places often supplied in a similar way. The former of these two resorts for pupil-teachers at the end of their apprenticeship must, however, soon come nearly to an end. But the proportion of pupil- teachers who have completed their apprenticeship to college vacancies, and to the yearly demand for trained teachers, will be greatly changed, and will probably be permanently rectified, by the alteration in the Govern- ment regulations of which I have spoken, and by which, in all large schools (schools of 240 or upwards), the number of pupil-teachers will, in future, not be allowed to exceed four to one certificated teacher ; but assistant-teachers, either certificated teachers or ex-pupil-teachers, will have to be employed instead of any additional number of pupil-teachers. If, besides, the minimum age of a pupil-teacher, when appren- ticed, should be raised to fourteen, and the appren- A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, 435 ticeship reduced to four years instead of five, prema- ture apprenticeship of children not likely to do well in the profession will be less likely to occur than heretofore. So far as respects the permanent demand, accord- ingly, we may take it as a settled point that the existing colleges will prove sufficient to supply the schools of the kingdom with teachers. Moreover, if there were likely still to be any deficiency, there can be no doubt that it would be met by the further erec- tion or the enlargement of colleges. The Church of England has its eye on the future, and has not by any means exhausted its powers of extension. Neither is the ability or the disposition of the Wesleyan Methodists to increase their college training capacity and power as yet exhausted. The British and Foreign Society, although they have greatly enlarged their means during the last two years, are competent to do more yet. All denominations, indeed, both in England and Scotland, appear to be able to do their full part, and combinedly to make an ample provision for the denominational wants of the country. Nor can it be said that an altogether undenominational provision is still wanting, because the large colleges of the British and Foreign Society are undenomina- tional. Under these circumstances there seems to be no need for the Government to interpose. There is a sufiicient provision, and a provision of every sort that is required. If any particular denomination deems its own wants to be inadequately met, there can hardly be any serious difficulty, during the present dispensation of Government aid — Government finding nearly three-fourths of the annual expense — in pro- viding whatever additional accommodation may be 436 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, thought necessary. At all events, there can be no case for Government outlay. Some have imagined that Government would find it necessary to provide a secular Training College. But such a college would be altogether impracticable, except as a Day Training College. The Government could not set up a large family, under an express bond and covenant that all religion and worship should be ignored within its enclosure. A Day Training College in London, more- over, would be very expensive to the students, very difficult to work, and, in every sense, a hazardous experiment. Nor would the difficulties in the way of such a college be much less considerable in Man- chester, Liverpool, or any other large English town. There are boarding-out or Day Training Colleges in Scotland. But Scotch domestic habits, Scotch family ways, and Scotch towns are very different from Eng- lish. The classes, also, from which the teachers come have, up to the present time, been very different. Neither have Scotch schools to do precisely the same work for villages and villagers as English schools. Throughout the Continent Normal Schools or Train- ing Colleges are always true collegia, where the students are boarded and watched over as a family. Teachers who are to train need to be trained. It is impossible for the work of training to be powerfully done upon the teachers, unless they live together as a family. The English youths who come up as pupil- teachers to be trained for their work greatly need to be trained en famille, morally and Christianly. I feel persuaded that, as a rule, it would be better for the candidate not to be trained in a college at all, but to finish his preparation for the work of teacher by acting as assistant to other teachers, rather than to A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. 437 attend college as an out-boarder. Many are now trained for the work in the work, first as pupil- teachers and then as assistants, without going to college at all. In general, however, the two years’ consecutive training at college develops powers and points of character in a far more thorough and effec- tual manner than can be done simply by practice in schools, together with a senior teacher’s instruction and aid. I cannot conceive, accordingly, of any satisfactory or permanent supply of Training Colleges for public service, except what is based originally upon volun- tary effort and provision, and is conducted by means of voluntary management. Believing, as I do, more- over, for reasons which have already been stated, that eventually even Training Colleges, although not by any means so soon as elementary schools, must become self-supporting, it appears to me the more certain that they can only stand upon a. voluntary basis. But the question here arises whether permanently in the future, and especially after Government bounties shall have been withdrawn, there is likely to be a supply forthcoming of teachers for our elemen- tary schools. So long as the Government bounties last, indeed, at their present rate, there can be little doubt that the supply will last. Of course, the ques- tion of the supply of teachers depends mainly — perhaps, as respects quantity as distinguished from quality, depends almost wholly — on the pecuniary inducement held out. If the salary of teachers is likely to remain as good in the future as in the past, there can be little doubt that the supply will con- tinue. Probably it will increase, because the profes- 438 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, sion is rising in public estimation. The only doubt, therefore, is, whether the payment will in future be as good as in the past, as good both positively and also in comparison to the general rates of payment in the various crafts and professions of the country. There can be no doubt as to the nearest future, — the next four or five years. During this period the colleges will barely be able to meet the demand for teachers. It is true that at the present moment the supply of teachers exceeds the demand, and that there were many scores who left the colleges last Christmas who could not find employment. But the reason of that is that, thus far, very few com- paratively of the new schools have been built and opened. At the beginning of 1871 the anticipation of a demand filled up the colleges, of which many had been previously half empty, so that the number leaving after two years’ training last Christmas was very greatly in excess of former years. Meantime, many former teachers who had left the profession have during the last two years been returning to it. Many pupil-teachers, also, who had finished their apprenticeship, but were unable to enter colleges in 1871 and 1872, have, in the manner I have already explained, added to the amount of teaching power available by becoming assistants, or by taking charge of small schools. In this way an addition has been made during the last twelve months to the resources of the market for teachers, perhaps almost equal to doubling the former supply for any one year. Next Christmas several new colleges, which have been undertaken since 1870, will have begun to add their quota to the supply, and, as I have intimated, some other new ones will still further increase the number J FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, 439 in 1874 and 1875. Each year also some hundreds of pupil-teacher candidates who, although they have passed the Christmas entrance examination success- fully, are unable to find admittance into the almost overfilled colleges, will swell the amount of distribut- able teaching power for the schools of the country. In these ways, some thousands of additional teachers beyond the former average supply will have been found available, during the next few years, to provide for the increased demand for teachers. It may well be doubted, nevertheless, whether they will be sufficient in number to meet the necessities of the case. The new schools, including Board and voluntary schools, may, perhaps, amount in number to 5,000. Then the requirement that, in all large schools, assistant- teachers, either certificated or such as have passed the Christmas college entrance (or Queen’s Scholar- ship) examinations, shall be employed, will constitute a large additional demand on the yearly supply. I anticipate, accordingly, that during the next three or four years the supply of teachers will, on the whole, scarcely suffice to meet the demand, and consequently that the rate of payment will keep fully up to its present high mark. Taking all sources of income into account — except the grants from the Science and Art Department on account of children who pass the Science and Art examinations — the teachers’ incomes may be said to range in London and other large towns, for good teachers of two or three years’ experience after leaving college and upwards (the salary generally rising, though by no certain rule, up to ten or twelve years’ experience), at from £150 to £300 for men, and from £90 to £160 for women. There is a certain, and not insignificant, proportion 440 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, of male teachers, whose incomes are considerably higher than the largest sum I have named. The grants from the Science and Art Department, also, sometimes add one-fourth or one-third to the teacher s income. As a class, accordingly, public elementary teachers at present are highly paid, while some make remarkably large incomes. The occupation of a clerk or cashier is, on an average, remunerated far less liberally. Clergymen, on an average, are not much better paid than elementary school teachers. At the same time, the access to the profession is easy, and exceedingly cheap. The pupil-teacher is paid mode- rately, indeed, but not meanly, for his services. The two years’ instruction at the Training Colleges is absolutely free from charge, except, in some instances, an entrance fee of a few pounds, on an average not exceeding £5. Never was there so easy, so cheap, or so sure an avenue into a profession at once honourable, interesting, and lucrative — one in which a capable and careful teacher can hardly fail to do very well indeed. It follows from these facts that we may expect, for some years to come, salaries to rule high in the pro- fession of teacher, and a large supply of pupil-teachers to be coming forward to keep the colleges full. The large recent increase of pupil-teachers, indeed, will not, during the next few years, contribute anything to the supply of teachers required by the large and rapid increase of schools. That increase will have to be met from the sources I have indicated, which will probably hardly avail to satisfy the heavy demand. The increased number of pupil-teachers, apprenticed during the last two years and in following years, will come forward too late (not less than five years hence). A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, 441 in their matured character of trained teachers, to be able to furnish any help towards relieving the extra- ordinary pressure of the next few years. When they are coming forward the pressure will be over. The ordinary yearly supply of trained teachers from the colleges, and by the way of assistantship and exami- nation, will, as we have seen, in all likelihood be amply equal, after the next five years, to meet the yearly demand for teachers. Few new schools will be built ; whatever increase there is will come forward very gradually. Six or seven per cent, on the number of certificated teachers in the profession will be the measure of the number of new teachers yearly required. Meantime, the number of inspected schools in the country will have increased by, perhaps, one-half, and the number of children in inspected schools probably by much more than one-half. The result would natur- ally be a very large increase in the number of pupil- teachers in the coming educational period. But for the requirement soon to be insisted upon, and to which I have already more than once referred, by which the proportion of certificated and assistant teachers in large schools is to be increased and of pupil-teachers to be diminished, the number of pupil-teachers apprenticed in the schools must in a few^years have risen to sixty per cent, in excess of what it was in 1870, and the number of fifth-year pupil-teachers desirous to enter Training Colleges would probably have much more than doubled. At Christmas last, the supply of pupil-teachers coming forward, at the end of their apprenticeship, with a view to enter the colleges, was greatly in excess of the capacity of the colleges to take them in, and was more than equal in number 442 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. to the supply required, in future, from year to year, to keep the colleges full, even after they shall have been enlarged and increased in number. It may be imagined, accordingly, what an increasing overflow of pupil-teacher supply for the colleges would be likely to come forward in years to come. The increased number and size of the schools will much more than compensate for the proportionate diminution in the number of pupil-teachers in large schools arising from the new rule, as to the proportion of pupil- teachers to certificated teachers, which is next year to come into force. The overflow of pupil-teacher can- didates for the office of teacher will, indeed, for some years to come, probably be absorbed by the vacancies created through the building of new schools, and by the demand for assistant-teachers ; but when the new schools are all opened, the crowd of pupil-teachers who have finished their apprenticeship and desire to proceed with their professional training is likely, according to present appearances, to be far more than equal to meet the demand, not only of the colleges for students, but also of the schools for assistant or pro- visionally certificated teachers (of small schools). The avenues to the profession, it would seem, are likely to be blocked with candidates of whom a considerable proportion must be excluded and thrown into other employments. The effect of this state of things would naturally be, afterwards, to put a check on the influx of pupil-teachers into the schools. Probably, however. Government may, just as the pressure is coming to the worst, still further limit the proportion of pupil-teachers, and at the same time increase the minimum age at which they may be apprenticed, in accordance with what I have already intimated to be A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. 443 desirable. If the lowest age of apprenticeship were to be fourteen, and the greatest number of pupil-teachers allowed to one certificated teacher were three, so that a school of 200 children should be taught by a certificated teacher, an assistant-teacher, certificated or a Queen’s Scholar, and three pupil-teachers, pro- bably the supply of pupil-teachers coming forward, Christmas by Christmas, to seek admission to the colleges, might about equal the demand. Here it is proper to observe that the supply of pupil-teachers as candidates for the Training Colleges has not, till within the last year or two, been in excess of the number required to keep the colleges adequately attended, and to provide trained teachers for the schools, merely because a large proportion of the pupil-teachers have left the track of the profession at the end of their apprenticeship. The great change in this respect which the last two years have brought would of itself have been sufficient entirely to alter the proportions of supply and demand between pupil- teachers and Training Colleges. The foregoing considerations have brought us, so far as respects the future supply of teachers for public elementary schools, to the following general conclusions. The supply of teachers will, for several years to come, be scarcely equal to the demand, and so the tendency of salaries will still be to rise ; probably in four or five years from now the average salary will be considerably higher than it is at present. After those years have passed away — years of school- building and increase — the supply of teachers will be for some while in excess of the number of schools, and therefore there will be some fall of salaries generally. But the fall will not be fast or far. So long indeed 444 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. as Government grants are made on the present scale, on condition of an equal amount to the grant being raised by school fees and subscriptions together, the general average of schoo] salaries must he maintained at a good level. It can never, whilst this lasts, fall again so low as it was before 1870 ; nor is it likely to fall much, if at all, lower than it is at present. With such a financial prospect for the profession, there can be no fear of the supply of teachers running short. It must not be forgotten, also, that the rise in the status of the school-teacher, consequent on the Act of 1870, and on the better general appreciation of the worth of education, is not likely to be affected by a limited fluctuation in salaries. The profession is perma- nently elevated in public esteem. One effect of this must be to attract into it a superior class of teachers. Up to the present time many who could have taught Avell, and who would have liked to teach our elementary system, and who could have done better for themselves financially in that way than any other, have yet kept aloof from the profession, because of certain feelings of social or caste prejudice ; hence- forth this prejudice must rapidly pass away, and many from well-bred families will seek to enter a profession which is not only lucrative, but is now recognised as honourable and '' respectable.” If, indeed, we look far into the future, we see a change coming which might perhaps seem likely to affect the prospects of the profession. I have given my reasons for believing that one day Government maintenance grants to public elementary schools must come to an end. There may be prizes, exhibitions, inducements, open to all children and all schools ; but there will be no maintenance grants available for A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. 445 a certain class of schools. The question arises, how this change will affect the supply of teachers. It will certainly tend to render the profession of elementary school teacher more ‘'respectable’’ and truly inde- pendent than ever ; but will it affect the financial prospects of the profession so seriously as to reduce the supply and lower the professional standard and efficiency of school-teachers ? I ain inclined to answer this question in the negative. It must be remembered, first of all, that this change, although I cannot doubt that it will come, will not come for many years, will come very gradually. Government has used the grant system as a mighty lever for elevating and extending the elementary education of the country, literary, com- mercial, and scientific. Before the grants begin to be reduced, the standards of examination must be raised higher than they have yet reached, both as respects teachers and scholars ; school attendance, also, must become much more regular ; in a word, the whole educational feeling and condition of the country, as regards both parents and children, teachers and taught, must be raised to a position equal to our national needs and proportionate to our national pre-eminence. When once such a result as this has been attained, and, along with this, schools of science and art, and effective and adequate con- nections between elementary and higher education, by means of exhibitions and otherwise, shall have been established, elementary education in England may be expected to learn to pay its own way. Grants may be gradually reduced, alike to all schools. Rates for Board schools may also be reduced until they are done away. Nearly all schools will be large schools. 446 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. at once economically and effectively organized. Parents will have learnt to value education. It has been no uncommon thing for the poor to pay, years ago, threepence, fourpence, and even sixpence a week, to miserably inefficient teachers, whether dames or not, for their children s schooling. The better sort of working people will think it no hardship to pay a some- what higher sum for the thoroughly effective education of their children. There will be a large and valuable class of teachers, who have never been trained at college, indeed, but who have been apprenticed to the profession, have acted as assistants, and have passed a good examination ; these teachers will be available and sufficient for smaller and somewhat humbler schools than the highly organized and superior town schools. These will often supply villages, especially female teachers of this class ; and will also serve well as teachers of the most elemen- tary schools for the lowest population in towns. Such a natural graduation of schools, with cor- responding grades of teachers, would meet the wants of the people at prices varying for the weekly payment from threepence to ninepence. The cost would be low, the benefit out of all proportion to the cost. Such educational provision would be well within the means of the great majority of the working classes, both in town and country, as labour is likely to be paid after twenty years have passed away. If only they have in the meantime learnt frugality, there can be no doubt of the perfect ease with which, in general, the working classes will be able to pay the cost of such an education. If any really cannot pay for the good, cheaper education of which I have spoken, they must be so poor as to stand in need of public A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, 447 relief. Nothing ought to be paid out of public rates or taxes directly towards the cost of education for any child, except on the principle of poor relief. This is the only ultimate solution of our educational problem to which we can come. Let the proper measures be adopted by which to dry up pauperism in general, such measures as those indicated in the earlier chapters of this volume, and the cure of pauperism, as a habit and institution of the English lower classes, will bring with it, will consist in the establishment of, a habit of provident frugality amply sufficient to put the English working parent almost universally into a condition in which he can easily pay for the schooling of his children. When this has come .to pass, candidates for the pro- fession of teacher will be glad to pay for their own two years’ training, and will find the results of such training amply remunerative. By that time, indeed, such a change may have been brought about in the home life and influences surrounding the humbler aspirant to the profession of school teacher, and at the same time so many of a superior grade in society may be glad to seek employment in a profession which is always more highly honoured in proportion as a nation becomes thoroughly educated, that it may be practicable to do in England what has been done, to some extent, with good success in better-educated and more steady Scotland ; namely, to open Day Training Colleges for properly qualified students. The greater cheapness of this arrangement, for students or teacher candidates residing at their own homes, would go far to solve the question of cheap training and cheap teacher supply, which is, to a cer- tain extent, equivalent to the supply of cheap teachers 448 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. — teachers cheap but good — especially for certain work. Training Colleges, on the family system, will always possess certain great advantages, especially for particular classes of students, and so will always com- mand a supply of candidates. National education, settled on such a basis as this, would be not only self-supporting but self-adjusting. The laws of free trade would, in a certain sense, begin under such conditions and in a nation thus enlight- ened and elevated, to apply to the question of national education. Demand would govern supply. Supply would answer to demand. There would no longer be any need of perpetual codes, old and revised and new and modified, eternally shifting and chang- ing, to guide and shape the development of national education, in methods and standards, in supply and demand, in cost and price. This artificial system must come to an end some day. It can only be brought to an end on some such plan as I have indicated. Some things, indeed, it will be necessary for the State to insist upon — that no child shall be put to partial labour who is not well, though partially, grounded in elementary education ; and that no child shall be put to full labour who has not obtained a sound and effective elementary education ; that no man shall have a vote who cannot read and write ; that all candidates for public employment shall be required to pass an adequate examination. These and similar requirements will be necessary in order to keep up the standard of education. But if these matters be strictly attended to, elementary education among a thoroughly educated people may, after it has once been completely and effectively organized, be left A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. 449 to take care of itself. At present, great as the bene- fits have been and are from the part Government has taken in the matter of education, every one must feel that the Avhole work lies much too absolutely in the hands of Government. We want a natural, universal, spontaneous, educational growth ; institutions and tribunals, departments and boards, which, though con- nected and united by the intermediation of some Government bureau, nevertheless develop and regu- late themselves, and are naturally influenced by each other. At present, all power is centred far too abso- lutely at the Council Office ; dictation, judgment, determination, flow too despotically thence. It can- not be helped ; it is the needful means, just now, to a better end. But it is in itself a most unattrac- tive ideal ; it cannot last or live very long. Whatever changes may happen, it seems to me that School Boards will have a proper place and function, and that Board schools will be a valuable element among other schools. But such schools, as I have intimated, should, like all the rest, be self- suj)porting. All this may read like a dream. Some may regard it as unpractical. To me, however, it seems that we cannot rest Avhere we are, and consequently that we must determine what our principles are, and to what ultimate development they are to take us. Are we to allow the present system to Avork into a universal system of free education for all classes ? If not, and I have shoAvn in Chapter V. Avhy I think this an altogether impossible alternative, then we must make up our minds to work into a self-supporting system. The present can only be justified as an exceptional and transitional condition of things. G G 450 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, I am not, indeed, sanguine as to the rate at which educational progress will proceed, whatever may be done, and under whatever system, so long as no revo- lution is brought about in the social condition of our operative classes ; still less am I sanguine as to the results of any mere school education which may be given to the children of our lowest classes, so long as no such social revolution has taken place. How much social circumstances, rather than the mere supply or efficiency of elementary schools, have to do with the literarj^ educational condition of the people, and how little the mere literary education of the people, up to certain limits, has to do with their comfort and independence as a class, might be strik- ingly and very instructively illustrated by a reference to the table of marriage-signature percentages, which is given in the late Census Report. What a notable fact it is that, while as we go northward the wages of the operative classes, speaking generally, and with their wages their independence and energy of character, largely increase, their literary capabilities, on an average, those of the women especially, rather diminish than increase. In slow Hampshire, the number of men who signed with a mark their mar- riage registers in 1870 was only 16*3 per cent., and of women only 14*6 per cent. ; in Berkshire, the pro- portions were respectively 21*2 and 15*1 ; in War- wickshire, 22*5 and 28*8 ; in Staffordshire, 36 and 44*1 ; in Cheshire, 19*3 and 30 ; in Derbyshire, 20*5 and 26 ; in Yorkshire, 18*7 and 33*3 ; in Lancashire, 20*5 and 39*4 ; in Durham, 24*3 and 36*5. Poor Dorset is no worse than the percentages 21*2 and 18*6. Sussex shows very favourably, the percentages of complete illiteracy being only 16*8 A FORECAST OF THE FUTVRE. 451 and 13. Kent also shows very well, the percentages being 15 and 15*6. Oxford, not many years ago a very backward county, now shows very fairly, the percentages being 19 ’6 and 15. Cambridge has much improved, but, with most of the eastern counties, still lags a good deal behind, the percentages being 28*4 and 25. Bedfordshire shows strangely worse than Berkshire, its percentages being very large, 32*5 and 35*6 respectively. Buckinghamshire, inter- mediate in situation, is intermediate in its proportions, the percentages being 25*2 and 24*3. Essex shows 24’6 and 18-3 ; Norfolk, 29*5 and 23‘6 ; Suffolk, 31 and 22*2. Lincolnshire is much better than these; the percentages are 17’7 and 17*2. The western counties are not quite so backward as the eastern counties, except where coal-mining and iron- mining have come in to make the ignorance darker. The percentages of Monmouthshire are 36*7 and 44 ’4, But Herefordshire shows 26*4 and 22’6 ; Worcester- shire, 25*5 and 28; Gloucestershire (helped up by Bristol, Gloucester, and Cheltenham) rises to 17*8 and 19*2, a much better percentage than that of Yorkshire, largely made up as that county is of great towns, whicli ought to raise the general percentage very much, and especially a very much better percentage for the women. Somersetshire shows 22*3 and 21*3 percent, Wiltshire is not bad, showing only, as percentages of illiteracy, 21*3 and 19*3. Poor despised Dorset we have already noted, the percentages being 21*2 and 18*6. Devonshire shows very fairly with its 17 and 19*4 per cent. Religious Cornwall shows to unex- pected disadvantage, with its 23*9 and 29*3 per cent., the reason probably being that the girls and women are extensively employed in light labour 452 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. connected with mining operations. Altogether, the population of the western counties appears to contain a much smaller proportion of persons utterly illiterate than the central and northern counties lying between the Trent and the Tees. I had occasion in Chapter II. to refer to the statesmen,’’ or independent yeomen of Westmore- land and Cumberland, and to the lead-miners of Cum- berland, as classes of men who have helped to leaven those counties with a love of education. The neigh- bourhood of Scotland has, also, no doubt, helped to produce the same result in all the border counties, including, in particular, Northumberland. The in- telligence and energy of our stalwart Northern peasantry, throughout all these counties, is well known. One is not surprised, accordingly, to find that all three stand well in the list. The percent- ages in Northumberland are for men 1 ST, for women 23*2 ; in Cumberland they are 15 and 26*1 ; in Westmoreland 11*2 and 14*7. These figures in the case of Westmoreland are the more remarkable, because there is no populous, hardly a considerable town in the county, and the dwellings of the people are widely scattered. The purely agricultural county of Eutland shoAvs well with its percentages of 14*5 and 10*9. Westmoreland and Eutland, apart from the metropolitan counties, may be considered the best educated counties in England. Metropolitan Surrey stands at the head of the entire list, the percentages being 9*2 and 12*3. Eelath^ely, however, the leA^el of this county must be considered as lower than that of either Eutland or Westmoreland. Metropolitan Middlesex can hardly be said to show well in com- parison with its 9*4 and 14*8. But the operations of A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. 453 the London School Board will, no doubt, soon make a decided change for the better in both counties. It is evident that there are special causes which, in certain districts of the country, make the literary education of women better or worse, in comparison with that of women in other districts, or of men in the same district. Speaking generally, in agricultural districts, and especially in southern agricultural dis- tricts, the women will be found to be relatively better spoken,” and better able to read, often also better able to write, than the men. They are brought into more frequent contact with the better-educated classes, and they are much more at home with school-going chil- dren. In the south and south-midland counties of England the girls and women, by domestic service, at school, and in many other ways, are brought into frequent contact, often into habitual intercourse, with ladies of the gentle and educated classes. They thus become familiar with the language of civilised thought and of books, and learn themselves the practice of the pen in letter-writing. In remote counties, especially far north, where there are but few resident gentry, women have not this advantage, and so are often inferior in knowledge and education to the men, who have the business of life to do, and who belong to an able and well-to-do class of labourers. Accord- ingly, while in Kent the masculine percentage of ignorance is 15, and the feminine nearly the same, 15*6, in Northumberland the percentages are re- spectively 13*1 and 23*2, and in Cumberland 15 and 26.1. The much larger proportion of independent freeholders and small farmers in Westmoreland is pro- bably the cause of the educational superiority of that county. In Berks, Buckingham, Cambridge, Dorset, A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. Essex, Hants, Hereford, Hertford, Himtingdon, Oxford, Rutland, Somerset, Suffolk, Sussex, Wilts, and Wor- cester, all purely agricultural counties, and most of tliem southerly or south-midland counties (little Rut- land being an exception), the women stand better than the men. This is not the case in a single northern or manufacturing county. There can scarcely be a doubt that the superior educational condition of Berks, in comparison of the counties to the east, west, and north, must be attributed to the very large number of resident gentry — families habitually resident for much the greater part of the 3'ear — that are to be found in that county. Kent enjoys an advantage of the same sort in its northern and western portions ; it contains, besides, a large number of small towns, with superior educational advantages ; it contains, also, a large proportion of independent small landowners, and thriving small farmers, and a labouring population in the receipt of superior wages. I do not know why Lincolnshire should be so much better than Bedfordshire. Perhaps the fact that much of the land has been reclaimed and brought into cultivation and proprietorship since feudal times may have something to do with it ; perhaps the fact that Methodism has taken so strong a hold of a large portion of it may also have some- thing to do with it. These two causes together may perhaps account in some degree for the superiority of Lincoln to the eastern counties generally, although, indeed, the former of the two applies more or less to other eastern counties besides Lincoln. The Metho- dists, too, have a good hold of a considerable portion of Bedfordshire. But I cannot help thinking, so far as Bedfordshire is concerned, that the straw-plait and A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, 455 lace manufactures, keeping tlie children from school, and the women at other than domestic work, may be largely accountable for its educational condition. Certain it is that the labour market, especially the manufacturing labour market, is everywhere the great competitor for the children against the school, and for the women against the home. It is no wonder, accordingly, that school education flourishes, as a rule, far better in agricultural than in manufacturing dis- tricts, taking into account the actual number, and especially the pecuniary ability, of the population. How lamentable is the census return for Lancashire ! In only two English counties, Monmouthshire and Staffordshire, both of which are colliery and iron- working counties, are the women more ignorant than in highly favoured, industrious, opulent, intelligent, Lancashire. Nearly 40 per cent, of the women married in 1870 signed a mark to their register. Young women these, averaging perhaps twenty years of age, of whom it may be roundly said that all had been both to Sunday and day school, and of whom a large proportion had probably been half-time scholars for five years (from eight to thirteen) while working at the mill ; and yet in seven years after leaving school they had lost all ready and fair power even of signing their own names. Of course, letter- writing for such must have been out of the question. The simple truth is, that for the seven years after their leaving school the mill or the pit had completely absorbed them for five days and a half of the week, and the remaining half day, with the Sunday, had been mostly given to sewing and mending (too little of that !), to marketing, to pleasure-taking, and to Sunday recreation.’’ Such a fact as this is ex- 456 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. ceedingly instructive as to the manner in which social conditions may make good school provision and regular school attendance for years of no effect. Beforehand it would never have been thought pos- sible that any such condition of education should be predicable of the great county of Lancaster. I am obliged, accordingly, to come back to the principles of my first chapter. It is good and need- ful to have good schools, and to enforce regular attendance ; but even these things together will not be sufficient to raise up for England an educated people. The social conditions of the population must be revolutionised. At present the labour market acts antagonistically to education ; it must be changed into an aid and an ally, by the requirement that no child shall go to labour for half time who is not well grounded in the earliest rudiments of education, nor for full time who is not thoroughly well instructed in what a citizen child ought to know. The roots of pauperism must be cut off by such measures as are indicated in my second chapter. The conditions of the rising and the grown-up labourer must be favour- able to thrift, and include openings for suitable enter- prise or investments. Only by such changes can the people of England become an educated people. The friends of education and of the working classes have noted with the deepest satisfaction the Lord Chancellor s measures for facilitating the transfer of land, as laid now before the Parliament. Such measures as these will be the most efficient co- operators with schools and School Boards towards the education of the people. Without such measures all provisions of school education will prove ineffectual. How far educational compulsion can be actually ap- A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, 457 plied to the classes which most deplorably need edu- cation remains yet to be proved. But even though school attendance should be more or less enforced upon them, ample evidence has, I submit, been brought forward in this volume to prove that, without a happy revolution in the social conditions under which parents and children live, the most neglected and the most deeply pauperised classes of English society cannot be really elevated. The percentages of illiteracy which I have quoted establish incon- testably at least one conclusion, that the most pau- perised counties in England are by no means the most illiterate. The counties lying between London and the south coast, and wide tracts of which have been demoralised by poverty, by smuggling, by poaching, by immemorial habits of servile dependence, by centuries of semi-starvation and physical depression, show far less of utter illiteracy than the well-fed and independent north -midland and northerly shires. School education, I must end by repeating, is only one among various elements necessary, and equally neces- sary, to the true education and elevation of a nation. It Avill not be concluded from the statistical in- formation which has now been under consideration, that the people of the south-midland and southern counties of England are well educated. There could, of course, be no greater mistake. All who are familiar with the social and intellectual condition of the population of those counties know how far otherwise is the actual state of the case. The schools in those counties are generally of a humble class ; a large proportion of the village schools are not even inspected. Very few of the children even in the best schools advance to the higher school standards 458 A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE, in education. The children nearly all leave school at a very early age. It cannot be imagined, indeed, that the young men and younger girls who managed to sign their names when three years ago they were married, have many of them received any effective education whatever. It can hardly be doubted that many of the men, though they may have pain- fully performed their signature on this special oc- casion, will, before many years have passed away, have quite forgotten how to write, and indeed can scarcely be said to have possessed the general power of writing, although they could coarsely plough out their signature. In short, the power rudely to make a signature affords no presumption whatever that the person who makes the signature possesses any real education Avhatever ; although, of course, the young person who, at this period of our nation s history, is unable to write even his or her own name may be presumed to be grossly ignorant of all general knowledge and destitute of civilising and elevating education. The wonder is not that so many in the southern and south-midland counties can barely write their names, but that so sadly large a proportion of young men and young women in the manufacturing and most of the northerly counties are unable even to write their names. It is evident enough that, in what I may speak of educationally as the home counties,’’ the counties of ancient civili- sation and of a numerous resident gentry, the superior rudimentary education of the women, as compared Avith that of the Avomen in the manufacturing and northerly counties, is not due either to school or to home influences, but to the habit of association, and in particular of domestic service, Avith the A FORECAST OF THE FUTURE. 459 families of the gentry on the part especially of the young women, and to other social influences of the better classes to which I have referred. These statistics throw remarkable and unwelcome light on the conditions of extreme and gross ignorance in differ- ent parts of the country, but they do not invalidate the conclusions attained in my earlier chapters. Con- sidering how deeply pauperised are some of the very counties which show in these statistics less un- favourably than other counties, where there is less pauperism, and especially less habitual and heredi- tary semi-pauperism, these statistics strongly confirm my conclusion that ‘'it is vain to hope that (mere) school education will bring pauperism to an end.” In particular, they go far to establish the point insisted upon first and last in this volume, that, to secure a true and thorough education of the people, adequate and well-grounded elementary attainments in school knowledge must be made the indispen- sable condition, in a lower degree, of employment as half-time workers, and, in a satisfactorily high degree, of employment as whole-time workers, at any wage-earning craft or occupation, for all children under the age of thirteen. In so far as this condi- tion cannot be enforced, it becomes impracticable to secure the enforcement of an effective elementary education. Direct compulsion, apart from this re- quirement, will indeed be of considerable value, espe- cially in dealing with the more accessible and amend- able classes of working people. But the indirect require- ment needs to be conjoined with the direct. Nor will direct and indirect together prove adequate to the ne- cessities of the case, apart from such social reforms as are indicated in the two first chapters of this volume. APPENDIX (A). THE ELEMENTARY EDUCATION ACT, 1870. School dis- tricts, &c. in schedule. School dis- trict to have sufficient public schools. Supply of schools in case of defi- ciency. Eegulations for conduct of public elementary school. The title of the Act is An Act to provide for public Elementary Education in England and Wales,” or, shortly, “The Elementary Education Act, 1870.” After the definition of terms, the Act proceeds as follows : — “ (I.) Local Provision for Schools. “4. For the purposes of this Act the respective districts, hoards, rates, and funds, and authorities described in the first schedule to this Act shall be the school district, the school board, the local rate, and the rating authority. “ Supply of Schools. “5. There shall be provided for every school district a sufficient amount of accommodation in public elementary schools (as hereinafter defined) available for all the children resident in such district for whose elementary education efficient and suitable provision is not otherwise made, and where there is an insufficient amount of such accommoda- tion in this Act referred to as “ public school accommoda- tion,” the deficiency shall be supplied in manner provided by this Act. , “ 6. Where the Education Department, in the manner provided by this Act, are satisfied and have given public notice that there is an insufficient amount of public school accommodation for any school district, and the deficiency is not supplied as hereinafter required, a school board shall be formed for such district and shall supply such deficiency, and in case of default by the school board the Education Department shall cause the duty of such board to be per- formed in manner provided by such Act. “ 7. Every elementary school which is conducted in accord- ance with the following regulations shall be a public ele- mentary school within the meaning of this Act ; and every public elementary school shall be conducted in accordance with the following regulations (a copy of which regulations shall be conspicuously put up in every such school) ; namely, “(1.) It shall not be required, as a condition of any child being admitted into or continuing in the school, that he shall attend or abstain from attending any Teachi To teach to the sati^ of Her Inspector. The same show increa in instruct\ discipline. The same The same The same I To sai Majesty’s of power a divisie school^ Of grouped the class- speciallyti lective less iction, an in svlJecU FIRST St’HElJULE. APPENDIX. 46 r Sunday school, or any place of religious worship, or that he shall attend any religious observance or any instruction in religious subjects in the school or elsewhere, from which observance or instruction he may he withdrawn by his parent, or that he shall, if withdrawn by his parent, attend the school on any day exclusively set apart for reli- gious observance by the religious body to which his parent belongs : ‘^(2.) The time or times during which any religious observance is practised or instruction in religious subjects is given at any meeting of the school shall be either at the beginning or at the end or at the beginning and the end of such meeting, and shall be inserted in a time-table to be approved by the Edueation Department, and to be kept permanently and conspicuously affixed in every schoolroom ; and any scholar may be withdrawn by his parent from such observance or instruction without for- feiting any of the other benefits of the school : “(3.) The school shall be open at all times to the inspec- tion of any of Her Majesty’s inspectors, so, how- ever, that it shall be no part of the duties of such inspector to inquire into any instruction in reli- gious subjects given at such school, or to examine any scholar therein in religious knowledge or in any religious subject or book : “(4.) The school shall be conducted in accordance with the conditions required to be fulfilled by an elementary school in order to obtain an annual parliamentary grant. ‘‘ Froceedings for Supply of Schools. “ 8. For the purpose of determining wuth respect to every Determina- school district the amount of public school accommodation, tion by if any, required for such district, the Education Depart- Education ment shall, immediately after the passing of this Act, cause such returns to be made as in this Act mentioned, and on of public ^ receiving those returns, and after such inquiry, if any, as school ac- they think necessary, shall consider whether any and what public school accommodation is required for such district,, and in so doing they shall take into consideration every school, whether public elementary or not, and whether actually situated in the school district or not, which in their opinion gives, or will when completed give, efficient elemen- tary education to, and is, or will when completed be, suit- able for the children of such district. “ 9. The Education Department shall publish a notice of Notice by their decision as to the public school accommodation for Education any school district, setting forth with respect to such dis- Department trict the description thereof, the number, size, and descrip- ac- tion of the schools (if any) available for such district, which commoda- 462 APPENDIX. tion re- quired. Formation of school board and requisition to provide schools. Proceedings on default of school board. Formation of school boards with- out inquiry upon appli- cation. the Education Department have taken into consideration as above mentioned, and the amount and description of the public school accommodation, if any, which appears to them to be required for the district, and any other parti- culars which the Education Department think expedient. “ If any persons being either — “(1.) Ratepayers of the district, not less than ten, or if less than ten being rated to the poor rate upon a rateable value of not less than one-third of the whole rateable value of the district, or, ‘‘(2.) The managers of any elementary school in the dis- trict, feel aggrieved by such decision, such persons may, within one month after the publication of the notice, apply in writing to the Education Depart- ment for and the Education Department shall direct the holding of a public inquiry in manner provided by this Act. At any time after the expiration of such month, if no public inquirer is directed, or after the receipt of the report made after such inquiry, as the case may be, the Education Department may, if they think that the amount of public school accommodation for the district is insufficient, publish a final notice stating the same particulars as were contained in the former notice, with such modifications (if any) as they think fit to make, and directing that the public school accommodation therein mentioned as required be supplied. 10. If after the expiration of a time, not exceeding six months, to be limited by the final notice, the Education Department are satisfied that all the public school accom- modation required by the final notice to be supplied has not been so supplied, nor is in course of being supplied with due despatch, the Education Department shall cause a school board to be formed for the district as provided in this Act, and shall send a requisition to the school board so formed requiring them to take proceedings forthwith for supplying the public school accommodation mentioned in the requisition, and the school board shall supply the same accordingly. “11. If the school board fail to comply with the requisition within twelve months after the sending of such requisition in manner aforesaid, they shall be deemed to be in default, and if the Education Department are satisfied that such board are in default they may proceed in manner directed by this Act with respect to a school board in default. “12. In the following cases (that is to say), “(1.) Where application is made to the Education Depart- ment with respect to an}^ school district by the persons who, if there were a school board in that district, would elect the school board, or with respect to any borough, by the council ; APPENDIK. 463 “(2.) Where the Education Department are satisfied that the managers of any elementary school in any school district are unable or unwilling any longer to maintain such school, and that if the school is discontinued the amount of public school accom- modation for such district will be insufidcient, the Education Department may, if they think fit, without making the inquiry or publishing the notices required by this Act before the formation of a school board, but after such inquiry public or other, and such notice as the Educa- tion Department think sufidcient, cause a school board to be formed for such district, and send a requisition to such, school board in the same manner in all respects as if they had published a final notice. “ An application for the purposes of this section may be made by a resolution passed by the said electing body after notice published at least a week previously, or by the Council, and the provisions of the second part of the second schedule to this Act with respect to the passing of such resolution shall be observed. “13. After the receipt of any returns under this Act subse- Proceedings quently to the first with respect to any school district, and by Educa- after such inquiry as the Education Department think necessary, the Education Department shall consider whether the first any and what public school accommodation is required in year, such district in the same manner as in the case of the first returns under this Act, and where in such district there is no school board acting under this Act they may issue notices and take proceedings in the same manner as they may after the receipt of the first returns under this Act, and where there is a school board in such district they shall proceed in manner directed by this Act. Management and Maintenance of Schools by School Board. “ 14. Every school provided by a school board shall be Manage- conducted under the control and management of such board nient of in accordance with the following regulations : school “(1.) The school shall be a public elementary school board, within the meaning of this Act : “(2.) No religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught in the school. “ 15. The school board may, if they think fit, from time to Appoint- time delegate any of their powers under this Act except the mentof power of raising money, and in particular may delegate the ^gcSoi control and management of any school provided by them, board, with or without any conditions or restrictions, to a body of managers appointed by them, consisting of not less^ than three persons. “ The school board may from time to time remove all or any of such managers and within the limits allowed by this section add to or diminish the number of or otherwise alter 464 APPENDIX. Neglect by- board of regulations of public elementary schools. Fees of children. Mainte- nance by school b oard of schools and suffi- cient school accommoda- tion. the constitution or powers of any body of managers formed by it under this section. “ Any manager appointed under this section may resign on giving written notice to the board. The rules contained in the third schedule to this Act respecting thre proceedings of bodies of managers appointed by a school board shall be observed. “ 16. If the school board do or permit any act in contra- vention of or fail to comply with the regulations according to which a school provided by them is required by this Act to be conducted, the Education Department may declare the school board to be and such board shall accordingly be deemed to be a board in default, and the Education Depart- ment may proceed accordingly, and every act or omission of any member of the school board, or manager appointed by them, or any person under the control of the board, shall be deemed to be permitted by the board, unless the contrary be proved. “If any dispute arises as to whether the school board have done or permitted any act in contravention of or have failed to comply with the said regulations, the matter shall be referred to the Education Department, whose decision thereon shall be final. “ 17. Every child attending a school provided by any school board shall pay such weekly fee as may be pre- scribed by the school board, with the consent of the Educa- tion Department, but the school board may from time to time, for a renewable period not exceeding six months, remit the whole or any part of such fee in the case of any child when they are of opinion that the parent of such child is unable from poverty to pay the same, but such remission shall not be deemed to be parochial relief given to such parent. “ 18. The school board shall maintain and keep efficient every school provided by such board, and shall from time to time provide such additional school accommodation as is, in their opinion, necessary in order to supply a sufficient amount of public school accommodation for their district. ‘‘ A scOool board may discontinue any school provided by them, or change the site 'of any such school, if they satisfy the Education Department that the school to be dis- continued is unnecessary, or that such change of site is expedient. “ If at any time the Education Department are satisfied that a school board have failed to perform their duty, either by not maintaining or keeping efficient every school provided by them, or by not providing such additional school accommodation as in the opinion of the Education Department is necessary in order to supply a sufficient amount of public school accommodation in their district, the Education) Department may send them a requisition requiring them to fulfil the duty which they have so failed APPENDIX. 465 to perform ; and if the school hoard fail within the time limited by such requisition, not being less than three months, to comply therewith to the satishiction of the Education Department, such board shall be deemed to be a school board in default, and the Education Department may proceed accordingly. “ 19. Every school board for the purpose of providing suflS- Powers of cient public school accommodation for their district, whether school board in obedience to any requisition or not, may provide, by building or otherwise, schoolhouses properly fitted up, and improve, enlarge, and fit up any schoolhouse provided by them, and supply school apparatus and everything neces- sary for the efficiency of the schools provided by them, and purchase and take on lease any land, and any right over land, or may exercise any of such powers.” Then follow provisions relating to the compulsory pur- chase of sites, the purchase of land, and the sale or lease of land or schoolhouse belonging to a school board. Next follow regulations in regard to the transfer of schools, as follows : — ■ “ 23. The managers of any elementary school in the dis- Managers trict of a school board may, in manner provided by this maytransfer Act, make an arrangement with the school board for trans- school board ferring their school to such school board, and the school board may assent to such arrangement. ‘‘An arrangement under this section may be made by the managers by a resolution or other act as follows ; (that is to say,) “(1.) Where there is any instrument declaring the trusts of the school, and such instrument provides any manner in which or any assent with which a reso- lution or act binding the managers is to be passed or done, then in accordance with the provisions of such instrument : “(2.) Where there is no such instrument, or such instru- ment contains no such provisions, then in the manner and with the assent, if any, in and with which it may be shown to the Education Depart- ment to have been usual for a resolution or act binding such managers to be passed or done : “(3.) If no manner or assent can be shown to have been usual, then by a resolution passed by a majority of not less than two-thirds of those members of their body who are present at a meeting of the body summoned for the purpose, and vote on the ques- tion, and with the assent of any other person whose assent under the circumstances appears to the Education Department to be requisite. “And in every case such arrangement shall be made only— “(1.) With the consent of the Education Department ; and, “(2.) If there are annual subscribers to such school, with H H 466 APPENDIX. the consent of a majority, not being less than two-thirds in number, of those of the annual sub- scribers who are present at a meeting duly sum- moned for the purpose, and vote on the question. ‘‘Provided that where there is any instrument declaring the trusts of the school, and such instrument contains any provision for the alienation of the school by any persons or in any manner or subjeet to any consent, any arrangement under this section shall be made by the persons in the manner and with the consent so provided. “ Where it appears to the Education Department that there is any trustee of the school who is not a manager, they shall cause the managers to serve on such trustee, if his name and address are known, such notice as the Education Department think sufficient ; and the Education Depart- ment shall consider and have due regard to any objections and representations he may make respecting the proposed transfer. “The Education Department shall consider and have due regard to any objections and representations respecting the proposed transfer which may be made by any person who has contributed to the establishment of such school. “ After the expiration of six months from the date of transfer the consent of the Education Department shall be conclusive evidence that the arrangement has been made in conformity with this section. “An arrangement under this section may provide for the absolute conveyance to the school board of all the interest in the schoolhouse possessed by the managers or by any person who is trustee for them or for the school, or for the lease of the same, with or without any restrictions, and either at a nominal rent or otherwise, to the school board, or for the use b}^ the school board of the school-' house during part of the week, and for the use of the same by the managers or some other person during the remainder of the week, or for any arrangement that may be agreed on. The arrangement may also provide for the transfer or application of any endowment belonging to the school or for the school board undertaking to discharge any debt charged on the school not exceeding the value of the interest in the schoolhouse or endowment transferred to them. “When an arrangement is made under this section the managers may, whether the legal interest in the school- house or endowment is vested in them or in some person as trustee for them or the school, convey to the school board all such interest in the schoolhouse and endowment as is vested in them or in such trustee, or such smaller interest as may be required under the arrangement. “ Nothing in this section shall authorise the managers to transfer any property which is not vested in them, or a trustee for them, or held in trust for the school ; and where APPENDIX. 467 any person has any right given him by the trusts of the school to use the school for any particular purpose inde- pendently of such managers, nothing in this section shall authorise any interference with such right except with the consent of such person. “ Every school so transferred shall, to such extent and during such times as the school hoard have under such arrangement any control over the school, be deemed to be a school provided by the school board. ‘‘ 24. Where any school or any interest therein has been transferred by the managers thereof to the school hoard of school boaM any school district in pursuance of this Act, the school tomanagerB. board of such district may, by^ a resolution passed as hereinafter mentioned, and with the consent of the Educa- tion Department, re-transfer such school or such interest therein to a body of managers qualified to hold the same under the trusts of the school as they existed before such transfer to the school board, and upon such re-transfer may" convey all the interest in the schoolhouse and in any endowment belonging to the school vested in 'the school board. “A resolution for the purpose of this section may^ be passed by a majority of not less than two-thirds of those members of the school board who are present at a meeting duly convened tor the purpose and vote on the question. ‘‘The Education Department shall not give their consent to any" such re-transfer unless they are satisfied that any money" expended upon such school out of a loan raised by" the school board of such district has been or will on the completion of the re-transfer be repaid to the school board. “Every school so re-transferred shall cease to be a school provided by a school board, and shall be held upon the same trusts on which it was held before it was transferred to the school board.” After which the Act thus proceeds : — “ Miscellaneous Powers of School Board. “ 25. The school board may, if they think fit, from'time to Payment of time, for a renewable period not exceeding six months, pay the whole or any part of the school fees payable at any public elementary school by any child resident in their district whose parent is in their opinion unable from poverty to pay the same ; but no such pay"ment shall be made or refused on condition of the child attending any public elementary school other than such as may be selected by the parent; and such payment shall not be deemed to be parochial relief given to such parent. “ 26. If a school board satisfy the Education Department Establish- that, on the ground of the poverty of the inhabitants of any place in their district, it is expedient for the interests special cases, of education to provide a school at which no fees shall be 468 APPENDIX. Contribu- tion to industrial schools. 29 & 30 Viet, c. 118. Establish- ment of industrial school. School board. Constitution of school board. required from the scholars, the hoard may, subject to such rules and conditions as the Education Department may prescribe, provide such school and may admit scholars to such school without requiring any fee* “ 27. A school hoard shall have the same powers of con- tributing money in the case of an industrial school as is given to a prison authority by section twelve of “ The Industrial Schools Act, 1866;” and upon the election of a school board in a borough the council of that borough shall cease to have power to contribute under that section. ‘‘ 28. A school board may, with the consent of the Educa- tion Department, establish, build, and maintain a certified industrial school within the meaning of the Industrial Schools Act, 1866, and shall for that purpose have the same powers as they have for the purpose of providing sufiicient school accommodation for their district : Pro- vided that the school board, so far as regards any such industrial school, shall he subject to the jurisdiction of one of Her Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State in the same manner as the managers of any other industrial school are subject, and such school shall be subject to the provisions of the said Act, and not of this Act. Constitution of School Boards. “ 29. The school hoard shall be elected in manner provided by this Act, — in a borough by the persons whose names are on the burgess roll of such borough for the time being in force, and in a parish not situate in the metropolis by the ratepayers. ‘‘ At every such election every voter shall he entitled to a number of votes equal to the number of the members of the school board to he elected, and may give all such votes to one candidate, or may distribute them among the candidates, as he thinks fit. “The school hoard in the metropolis shall he elected in manner hereinafter provided by this Act. “ 30. With respect to the constitution of a school board the following provisions shall have effect : “(1.) The school board shall he a body corporate, by the name of the school hoard of the district to which they belong, having a perpetual succession and a common seal, with power to acquire and hold land for the purpose of this Act without any license in mortmain : “(2.) No act or proceeding of the school hoard shall he questioned on account of any vacancy or vacancies in their body : “(3.) No disqualification of or defect in the election of any persons or person acting as members or member of the school board shall be deemed to vitiate any proceedings of such board in which they or he have taken part, in cases where the majority of APPENDIX, 469 members parties to such proceedings were duly entitled to act : “(4.) Any minute made of proceedings at meetings of the school board, if signed by any person purporting to be the chairman of the board, either at the meeting of the board at which such proceedings took place or at the next ensuing meeting of the board, shall be receivable in evidence in all legal proceedings without further proof, and until the contrary is proved every m-eeting of the school board, in respect of the proceedings of which minutes have been so made, shall be deemed to have been duly convened and held, and all the members thereof to have been duly qualified to act : ^‘(5.) The members of a school board may apply any money in their hands for the purpose of indemnifying themselves against any law costs or damages which they may incur in or in consequence of the execu- tion of the powers granted to them : ‘^(6.) The rules contained in the third schedule to this Act with respect to the proceedings of school boards, and the other matters therein contained, shall be observed. ‘‘31. With respect to the election under this Act of a school board, except in the metropolis, the following pro- visions shall have effect : “(1.) The number of members of a school board shall be such number, not less than five nor more than fifteen, as may be determined in the first instance by the Education Department, and afterwards from time to time by a resolution of the school board approved by the Education De- partment ; “(2.) The regulations contained in the second schedule to this Act with respect to the election and retire- ment of the members of the school board, and the other matters therein contained, shall be of the same force as if they were enacted as part of this section ; ^‘(3.) The Education Department may, at any time after the date at which they are authorised under this Act to cause a school board to be formed, send a requisition to the mayor or other ofihcer or officers who have power to take proceedings for holding the election requiring him or them to take such proceedings, and the mayor or other officer or officers shall comply with such requisition ; and in case of default some person appointed by the Education Department may take such proceedings, and shall have for that purpose the same powers as the person in default. Election of school hoard. 470 APPENDIX. Non-elec- tion, &c. of school board. Determina- tion of dis- putes as to the election of school boards. Disqualifi- cation of member of board. Appoint- ment of officers. Officer to enforce 32. If from any cause in any school district the school hoard either are not elected at the time fixed for the first election, or at any time cease to he in existence, or to be of sufficient number to form a quorum by reason of non-election, or otherwise, or neglect or refuse to act, the Education Department may proceed in the same manner as if there were a school board acting in such district, and that the board were a board in default. “ 33. In case any question arises as to the right of any person to act as a member of a school board under this Act, the Education Department may, if they think fit, inquire into the circumstances of the case, and make such order as they deem just for determining the question, and such order shall be final unless removed by writ of certiorari during the term next after the making of such order. 34. Ho member of a school board, and no manager ap- pointed by them, shall hold or accept any place of profit the appointment to which is vested in the school board or in any managers appointed by them, nor shall in any way share or be concerned in the profits of any bargain or con- tract with or any work done under the authority of such school board or managers appointed by them : Provided that this section shall not apply to — “(1.) Any sale of land or loan of money to a school board ; or, “(2.) Any bargain or contract made with or work done by a company in which such member holds shares ; “(3.) The insertion of any advertisement relating to the affairs of any such school board in any newspaper in which such member has a share or interest, if he does not vote with respect to such sale, loan, bargain, contract, work, or insertion. Any person who acts in contravention of this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to a penalty not ex- ceeding fifty pounds, and the said place of profit and his office as member or manager shall be vacant. “ 35. A school board may appoint a clerk and a treasurer and other necessary officers, including the teachers required for any school provided by such board, to hold office during the pleasure of the board, and may assign them such salaries or remuneration (if any) as they think fit, and may from time to time remove any of such officers ; but no such appointment shall be made, except at the first meeting of such board, unless notice in writing has been sent to every member of the board. “ Two or more school boards may arrange for the appoint- ment of the same person to be an officer to both or all such boards. Such officers shall perform such duties as may be as- signed to them by the board or boards who appoint them. “ 36. Every school board may, if it think fit, appoint an officer or officers to enforce any byelaws under this Act APPENDIX. 471 with reference to the attendance of childresr^t school, and attendance to bring children who are liable under the Industrial ^ sc 00 . Schools Act, 1866, to he sent to a certified industrial school before two justices in order to their being so sent, and any expenses incurred under this section may be paid out of the school fund. “ School Board in Metropolis, 37 . The provisions of this Act with respect to the for- Schoolboard mation and the election of school boards in boroughs and in metro- parishes shall not extend to the metropolis ; and with P^hs. respect to a school hoard in the metropolis the following provisions shall have effect : “(1.) The school board shall consist of such number of members elected by the divisions specified in the fifth schedule to this Act as the Education Depart- ment may by order fix : “(2.) The Education Department, as soon as maybe after the passing of this Act, shall by order determine the boundaries of the said divisions for the pur- poses of this Act, and the number of members to be elected by each such division : ‘‘(3.) The provisions of this Act with respect to the con- stitution of the school board shall extend to the constitution of the school board under this section, and the name of the school board shall be the School Board for London : ‘‘(4.) The first election of the school board shall take place on such day, as soon as may be after the passing of this Act, as the Education Department may appoint, and subsequent elections shall take place in the month of November every third year on the day from time to time appointed by the school board : “( 0 .) At every election for each division every voter shall be entitled to a number of votes equal to the number of the members of the school board to be elected for such division, and may give all such votes to one candidate, or may distribute them among the candidates, as he thinks fit : “(6.) Subject to the provisions contained in this section and in any order made by the Education Depart- ment under the power contained in the second schedule to this Act, the members of the board shall, in the city of London, be elected by the same persons and in like manner as common councilmen are elected, and in the other divisions of the metropolis shall be elected by the same persons and in the same manner as vestrymen under The Metropolis Management Act, 1855, and the Acts amending the same ; and, subject as aforesaid, the Acts relating to the election of APPENDIX. 472 common conncilmen, and sections fourteen to nineteen, and twenty-one to twenty-seven, all inclusive, of The Metropolis Management Act, 1855, and section thirty-six of The Metropolis Management Amendment Act, 1862, shall, so far as is consistent with the tenor thereof, apply in the case of the election of members of the school board : ‘^(7.) The school board shall proceed at once to supply their district with sufficient public school accommo- dation, and any requisition sent by the Education Department to such board may relate to any of the divisions mentioned in the fifth schedule to this Act in like manner as if it were a school district, and it shall not be necessary for the Education Department to publish any notices before sending such requisition : ‘^(8.) The Education Department may, in the order fixing the boundaries of such divisions, name some person who shall be the returning officer for the purposes of the first election of the school board, and the person who is to be the deputy returning officer in each such division : ‘‘(9.) The chairman of the school board shall be elected by the school board, and any chairman who may be elected by the board may be elected either from the members of the board or not, and any chairman who is not an elected member of the board shall by virtue of his office be a member of the board as if he had been so elected : “(10.) The school board shall apportion the amount re- quired to be raised to meet the deficiency in the school fund among the different parts of the metropolis mentioned in the third column of the first schedule to this Act in proportion to the rateable value of such parts as shown by the valuation lists for the time being in force under “The Valuation (Metropolis) Act, 1869,” or, if any amount is so required before any such valuation list comes into force, in the same proportion and according to the same basis in and according to which the then last rate made by the Metropolitan Board of Works was assessed : “(11.) For obtaining payment of the amount specified in any precept sent by the school board to the rating authority for any part of the metropolis, the school board, in addition to any other powers and remedies, shall have the like powers as the Metropolitan Board of Works have for obtaining payment of any sum assessed by them on the same part of the metropolis. APPENDIX. 473 38. The school board for London may pay to the chair- man of such board such salary as they may from time to time, with the sanction of the Education Department, fix. “ 39. If at any time application is made to the Education Department by the school board for London, or by any six members of that board, and it is shown to the satis- faction of the Education Department that the population of anyjof the divisions mentioned in the fifth schedule to this Act, as shown by any census taken under the authority of Parliament, has varied materially from that shown by the previous census, or that the rateable value of any of the said divisions has materially varied from the rateable value of the same division ten years previously, the Educa- tion Department, after such inquiry as they think necessary, may, if they think fit, make an order altering, by way of increase or decrease, the number of members of that and any other division. United School Districts. ‘^40. Where the Education Department are of opinion that it would be expedient to form a school district larger than a borough or a parish or any school district formed under this Act, they may, except in the metropolis, by order made after such inquiry and notice as hereinafter mentioned, form a united school district by uniting any two or more adjoining school districts, and upon such union cause a school board to be formed for such united school district. “ A united school district shall for all the purposes of this Act be deemed to be a school district, and shall throughout this Act be deemed to be substituted for the school districts out of which it is constituted, and the school board of the united school district shall be the school board appointed under this Act, and the local rate and rating authority for the united district shall be in each of the constituent districts thereof the same as if such consti- tuent district did not form part of the united school district. ‘‘41. The Education Department, as soon as may be after the passing of this Act, may cause inquiry to be made into the expediency of uniting any two or more school dis- tricts, and if after such inquiry they are of opinion that it would be expedient to unite any such school districts, they shall in the notice of their decision as to the public school accommodation for such districts state that they propose to unite such districts, and the provisions of this Act with respect to the application for a public inquiry by persons aggrieved by the said notice, and to the holding of such public inquiry, and to the final notice, shall apply in the case of the proposed union of districts with this qualifica- tion, that it shall not be necessary to cause a public inquiry to be held with respect to the union of districts until after the Payment of chairman. Alteration of number of members. Formation by Educa- tion Depart- ment of united dis- tricts. Conditions of formation of district. 474 APPENDIX. As to disso- lution of united school dis- trict. Public inqui^ as to united district in future. Order to be evidence of formation or dissolution. Constitu- tion of school in united school district. Election of school board in united school dis- trict. expiration of the period allowed by the final notice tor the supply of school accommodation. The order for the union may be made at the time when the Education Department are first authorised to cause a school board to be formed or subsequently. Where a union -of districts is proposed the Education Department shall consider whether any public school accommodation is required for the area proposed as the united district instead of for each of the districts constituting such area, and their decision as to the public school accommodation and the notice of such decision shall accordingly refer to such area, and not separately to each of the constituent districts. “ 42. The Education Department may, by order made after such inquiry and notice as hereinafter mentioned, dissolve a united school district, and may deal with the constituent districts thereof in the same manner as if they had never been united, and may cause school boards to be elected therein. “ 43. The Education Department may at any time, after any proceedings after the first returns under this Act, if they think fit, cause inquiry to be made into the expediency of forming or dissolving a united school district, and where they propose at any time alter such inquiry to form or dissolve a united school district, they shall publish notice of the proposed order not less than three months before the order is made ; the like persons as are authorised to apply for a public inquiry after the first returns made under this Act may, if they feel aggrieved by the proposed order, apply in like manner for a public inquiry, and the Education Department shall cause a public inquiry to be held, and shall consider the report made to them upon such inquiry before they make the order for such formation or dissolution. “ 44. Any order of the Education Department forming or dissolving a united district shall be evidence of the forma- tion or dissolution of such district, and after the expiration of three months from the date of such order the district shall be presumed to have been duly formed or dissolved, as the case may be, and no objection to the formation or dis- solution thereof shall be entertained in any legal proceedings whatever. “ 45. The provisions in this Act respecting the constitu- tion of the school board shall apply to the constitution of the school board in a united school district, and the name of the district shall be such as may be prescribed by the Education Department. ‘‘ 46. In a united school district the school board shall be such number of members elected by the electors of the dis- trict as may be specified in the order forming the district, subject nevertheless to alteration in the same manner as in the case of any other school board ; and every person who in any of the districts constituting such united district would APPENDIX. 475 be entitled if it were not united to vote at the election of members of a school board for such constituent district shall be an elector for the purposes of this section, and the pro- visions of this Act respecting the election of a school board in a district shall extend to the election of such members. “ 47. Where any part of a proposed united school dis- Arrang-e- trict includes any district or part of a district in which there ments on is a school board already acting under this Act, or where a united school district is dissolved, the Education Depart- district, ment may by order dissolve the then existing school board, or make all necessary changes in the constitution of such existing school board, and may by order make proper arrangements respecting the schools, propert}^, rights, and liabilities of such board, and all arrangements which may be necessary. “48. If the Education Department are of opinion that as to small any parish in a united school district has too few ratepayers parishes, to be entitled to act as a separate parish for the purposes of this Act, they may by order direct that it shall for the pur- pose of voting for a member or members of the school board, and for all or any of the purposes of this Act, be added to another parish, and thereupon the persons who would be entitled to vote and attend the vestry if it were a parish shall be entitled for the purpose of voting and for such pi^rposes to vote in and attend the vestry of the parish to which their parish is so added. All the parishes comprised in a united district, or any two or more of them, may be added together in pursuance of this section. “ Contributory Districts. “ 49. The Education Department may by order direct Contribu- that one school district shall contribute towards the pro- tory district, vision or maintenance of public elementary schools in another school district or districts, and [in such case the former (or contributing district) shall pay to the latter (or school owning district cr districts) such proportion of the expenses of such provision or maintenance or a sum calcu- lated in such manner as the Education Department may from time to time prescribe. “ 50. Where one school district contributes to the pro- Election of vision or maintenance of any school in another school district, members by such number of persons as the Education Department torv dis-" (having regard to the amount to be contributed by the con- trict. tributing district) direct shall be elected in the contributing district, and shall be members of the school board of the school owning district, but such last-mentioned district shall, except so far as regards the raising of money and the attendance of children at school, be deemed alone to be the district of such school board ; such members shall be elected by the school board, if any, or, if there is none, by the persons who would elect a school board if 476 APPENDIX. Notices and public inquiry as to contribu- tory dis- trict. Combina- tion of school boards. School fund of school board. Deficiency of school fund raised out of rates. there were one, in the same manner as a school board would be elected. ‘‘51. The provisions of this Act with respect to the notices to be published, and the application for and the holding of a public inquiry in the case of an order for the formation of a united district, shall apply, mutatis mutan- dis^ to an order respecting a contributory district. “An order respecting a contributory district shall be evidence of the formation of such district, and after the expiration of three months from the date thereof shall be presumed to have been duly made, and no objection to the legality thereof shall be entertained in any legal proceeding whatever. “ Any such order may be revoked or altered by an order of the Education Department, and a new order may be made in lieu thereof, and all the provisions of this Act respecting the making of an order for contribution shall apply to the making of an order for the revocation or altera- tion of an order for contribution. “ 52. The school boards of any two or more school dis- tricts, with the sanction of the Education Department, may combine together for any purpose relating to elementary schools in such districts, and in particular may combine for the purpose of providing, maintaining, and keeping efficient schools common to such districts. 8uch agreements may provide for the appointment of a joint body of managers under the provisions of this Act with respect to the appoint- ment of a body of managers, and for the proportion of the contributions to be paid by each school district, and any other matters which, in the opinion of the Education Department, are necessary for carrying out such agree- ment, and the expenses of such joint body of managers shall be paid in the proportions specified in the agreement by each of the school boards out oi their school fund. “ Expenses, “ 53. The expenses of the school board under this Act shall be paid out of a fund called the school fund. There shall be carried to the school fund all moneys received as fees from scholars, or out of moneys provided by Parlia- ment, or raised by way of loan, or in any manner whatever received by the school board, and any deficiency shall be raised by the school board as provided by this Act. “ 54. Any sum required to meet any deficiency in the school fund, whether for satisfying past or future liabilities, shall be paid by the rating authority out of the local rate. “ The school board may serve their precept on the rating authority, requiring such authority to pay the amount specified therein to the treasurer of the school board out of the local rate, and such rating authority shall pay the same accordingly, and the receipt of such treasurer shall be a APPENDIX. 477 good discharge for the amount so paid, and the same shall be carried to the school fund. “If the rating authority have no moneys in their hands in respect of the local rate, they shall, or if they have paid the amount then for the purpose of reimbursing themselves they may, notwithstanding any limit under any Act of Parliament or otherwise, levy the said rate, or any contri- butions thereto, or any increase of the said rate or contribu- tions, and for that purpose shall have the same powers of levying a rate and requiring contributions as they have for the purpose of defraying expenses to which the local rate is ordinarily applicable. “ 55. In a united district the school board shall apportion Apportion- the amount required to meet the deficiency in the school fund among the districts constituting such united district in united in proportion to the rateable value of each such constituent and contri- district, and may raise the same b}^ a precept sent to the rating authority of each constituent district. “ Where one school district contributes to the expenses of the schools in another school district, the authority of the school owning district may send their precept either to the school hoard, if any, or to the rating authority of the con- tributing district, requiring them to pay to their treasurer the amount therein specified, and such authority or board shall pay the same accordingly, and the receipt of the trea- surer shall be a good discharge for the same, and such amount, if paid by the school board, shall be paid out of the school fund. “ The precept, if sent to the rating authority, either on the default of the school board or otherwise, shall be deemed to be a precept for meeting a deficiency in the school fund, and the provisions of this Act shall apply accordingly.” Clauses 56 to 58 relate to the remedy of the school board on default of rating authority, &c. ; and to the borrowing of mone}’’ by school boards. Next follow special provisions in regard to “Accounts and Audit.” The following are the provisions respecting a defaulting school board : — “ 63. Where the Education Department are, after such Proceedings inquiry as they think sufficient, satisfied that a school board ^ is in default as mentioned in this Act, they may by order board.°^ declare such board to be in default, and by the same or any other order appoint any persons, not less than five or more than fifteen, to be members of such school board, and may from time to time remove any member so appointed, and fill up any vacancy in the number of such members, whether caused by removal, resignation, death, or otherwise, and, subject as aforesaid, add to or diminish the number of such members. 478 APPENDIX. Certificate of Education Department as to ap- pointment, expenses, and loans. Expenses incurred on default. After the date of the order of appointment the persons (if any) who were previously members of the school board shall be deemed to have vacated their offices as if they were dead, but any such member maybe appointed a member by the Education Department. The members so appointed by the Education Department shall be deemed to be members of the school board in the same manner in all respects as if, by election or otherwise, they had duly become members of the school board under the other provisions of this Act, and may perform all the duties and exercise all the powers of the school board under this Act. “The members appointed by the Education Department shall hold office during the pleasure of the Education De- partment, and when that department consider that the said default has been remedied, and everything necessary for that purpose has been carried into effect, they may, by order, direct that members be elected for the school board in the same manner as in the case of the first formation of the school board. After the date fixed by any such order the members appointed by the Education Department shall cease to be members of the school board, and the members so elected shall be members of the school board in their room, but the members appointed by the Education Depart- ment shall not be disqualified from being so elected. Until any such order is made no person shall become a member of the school board otherwise than by the appointment of the Education Department. “ Where a school board is not elected at the time fixed for the first election, or has ceased to be in existence, the Education Department may proceed in the same manner as if such board had been elected and were in existence. “ 64. The Education Department may from time to time certify the appointment of anj^ persons appointed to be members of a school board in default, and the amount of expenses that have been incurred by such persons, and the amount of any loan required to be raised for the purpose of defraying any expenses so incurred, or estimated as about to be incurred ; and such certificate shall be conclusive evi- dence that all the requirements of this Act have been duly complied with, and that the persons so appointed have been duly appointed, and that the amounts therein mentioned have been incurred or are required. “ 65. The expenses incurred in the performance of their duties by the persons appointed by the Education Depart- ment to be members of a school board, including such remuneration (if anj") as the Education Department ma}^ assign to such persons, shall, together with all expenses incurred by the board, be paid out of the school fund ; and any deficiency in the school fund may be raised by the school board as provided by this Act ; and where the Edu- cation Department have, either before or after the payment of such expenses, certified that any expenses have been APPENDIX. +79 incuiTed by a school board, or any members appointed by them, such expenses shall be deemed to have been so incurred, and to have been properly paid out of the school fund. “ Where the members of a school board have been ap- pointed by the Education Department, such school board shall not borrow or charge the school fund with the prin- cipal and interest of any loan exceeding such amount as the Education Department certify as mentioned in this Act to be required. “ 66. Where the Education Department are of opinion that in the case of any school district the school board for such district are in default, or are not properly performing their duties under this Act, they may by order direct that the then members of the school board of such district shall vacate their seats, and that the vacancies shall be filled by a new election ; and after the date fixed by any such order the then members of such board shall be deemed to have vacated their seats, and a new election shall be held in the same manner, and the Education Department shall take the same proceedings for the purpose of such election as if it were the first election ; and all the provisions of this Act relating to such first election shall apply accord- ingly. “ The Education Department shall cause to be laid before both Houses of Parliament in every year a special report stating the cases in which they have made any order under this section during the preceding year, and their reasons for making such order.” After sections relating to Eeturns and Inquiry,” and ‘‘Public Inquiry,” we come to the permissive compulsory clauses, as follows : — “ Attendance at School. “ 74. Every school board may from time to time, with the approval of the Education Department, make bye-laws for all or smy of the following purposes : — “(1.) Requiring the parents of children of such age, not less than five years nor more than thirteen years, as may be fixed by the bye-laws, to cause such children (unless there is some reasonable excuse) to attend school : “(2.) Determining the time during which children are so to attend school ; provided that no such bye-law shall prevent the withdrawal of any child from any religious observance or instruction in religious subjects, or shall require any child to attend school on any day exclusively set apart for religious ob- servance by the religious body to which his parent belongs, or shall be contrary to anything contained in any Act for regulating the education of children employed in labour : Dissolution of school boards. As to at- tendance of children at school. 480 APPENDIX, “(3.) Providing for the remission or payment of the whole or any part of the fees of any child where the parent satisfies the school hoard that he is unable from poverty to pay the same : “(4.) Imposing penalties for the breach of any bye-laws": “(5.) Revoking or altering any bye-law previously made. “Provided that any bye-law under this section requiring a child between ten and thirteen years of age to attend school shall provide for the total or partial exemption of such child from the obligation to attend school if one of Her Majesty’s inspectors certifies that such child has reached a standard of education specified in such bye-law. Any of the following reasons shall be a reasonable excuse ; namely, “(1.) That the child is under efidcient instruction in some other manner : “(2.) That the child has been prevented from attending school by sickness or any unavoidable cause : “(3.) That there is no publie elementary school open which the child can attend within such distance, not exceeding three miles, measured according to the nearest road from the residence of such child, as the bye-laws may prescribe. “ The school board, not less than one month before sub- mitting any bye-law under this section for the approval of the Education Department, shall deposit a printed copy of the proposed bye-laws at their ofidce for inspection by any ratepayer, and supply a printed copy thereof gratis to any ratepayer, and shall publish a notice of such deposit. “The Education Department before approving of any bye- laws shall be satisfied that such deposit has been made and notice published, and shall cause such inquiry to be made in the school district as they think requisite. “ Any proceeding to enforce any bye-law may be taken, and any penalty for the breach of any bye-law may be recovered, in a summary manner ; but no penalty imposed for the breach of any bye-law shall exceed such amount as with the costs will amount to five shillings for each ofifence, and such bye-laws shall not come into opera- tion until they have been sanctioned by Her Majesty in Council. “It shall be lawful for Her Majesty, by Order in Council, to sanction the said bye-laws, and thereupon the same shall have efiect as if they were enacted in this Act. “ All bye-laws sanctioned by Her Majesty in Council under this section shall be set out in an appendix to the annual report of the Education Department.” After this come a large number of Miscellaneous Regu- lations (Clauses 75-95). And then the section relating, as follows, to the APPENDIX, /j8i ^‘Parliamentary Grant. “ 96. After the thirty-first day of March one thousand Parliamen- eight hundred and seventy-one no parliamentary grant shall be made to any elementary school which is not a elementary public elementary school within the meaning of this Act. school only. “ No parliamentary grant shall be made in aid of building, enlarging, improving, or fitting up any elementary school, except in pursuance of a memorial duly signed, and con- taining the information required by the Education De- partment for enabling them to decide on the application,, and sent to the Education Department on or before the thirty-first day of December one thousand eight hundred and seventy. “ 97. The conditions required to be fulfilled by an ele- Conditions mentary school in order to obtain an annual parliamentary of annual grant shall be those contained in the minutes of the Edu- tary^g^S' cation Department in force for the time being, and shall amongst other matters provide that the thirty-first day of March one thousand eight hundred and seventy-one — “(i.) 8uch grants shall not be made in respect of any instruction in religious subjects : “(2.) Such grant shall not for any year exceed the income of the school for that year which was derived from voluntary contributions, and from school fees, and from any sources other than the parliamentary grant ; but such conditions shall not require that the school shall be in connection with a religious denomination, or that religious instruction shall be given in the school, and shall not give any preference or advantage to any school on the ground that it is or is not provided by a school board : “ Provided that where the school board satisfy the Educa- tion Department that in any year ending the twenty-ninth of September the sum required for the purpose of the annual expenses of the school board of any school district, and actually paid to the treasurer of such board by the rating authority, amounted to a sum which would have been raised by a rate of threepence in the pound on the rateable value of such district, and any such rate would have produced less than twenty pounds, or less than seven shillings and sixpence per child of the number of children in the average attendance at the public elementary schools provided by such school board, such school board shall be entitled, in addition to the annual parliamentary grant in aid of the public elementary schools provided by them, to such further sum out of moneys provided by Par- liament as, when added to the sum actually so paid by the rating authority, would, as the case may be, make up the sum of twenty pounds, or the sum of seven shillings and sixpence for each such child, but no attendance shall be reckoned for the purpose of calculating such average I I 482 APPENDIX. Refusal of grant to un- necessary schools. Power of schools to take parlia- mentary grants. attendance unless it is an attendance as defined in tlie said minutes : ‘‘ Provided that no such minute of the Education Depart- ment not in force at the time of the passing of this Act shall he deemed to he in force until it has lain for not less than one month on the table of both Houses of Parliament. 98. If the managers of any school which is situate in the'district of a school hoard acting under this Act, and is not previously in receipt of an annual parliamentary grant, whether such managers are a school board or not, apply to the Education Department for a parliamentary grant, the Education Department may, if they think that such school is unnecessary, refuse such application. “ The Education Department shall cause to he laid before both Houses of Parliament in every year a special report stating the cases in which they have refused a grant under this section during the preceding year, and their reasons for each such refusal. 99. The managers of every elementary school shall have power to fulfil the conditions required in pursuance of this Act to be fulfilled in order to obtain a parliamentary grant, notwithstanding any provision contained in any instrument regulating the trusts or management* of their school, and to apply such grant accordingly.” The hundredth clause, providing for an annual report of the Education Department to Parliament, closes the Act, after which follow the schedules, relating to local rating funds and authorities, to the election and retirement of school hoard members, rules for applications for a school board, rules for the election of the London School Board, as to the proceedings of school hoards, &c. APPENDIX (B). The following are the most important articles in the Code now in force in all public elementary schools, according to the latest revision (1873). — Definitions — 4. An elementary school is a school, or department of a school, at which elementary education is the principal part of the education there given, and does not include any school or department of a school at which the ordinary payments, in respect of the instruction, from each scholar, exceed ninepence a week (Elementary Education Act, 1870, sec. 3). 5. Aid to maintain schools is given by annual grants to the managers conditional upon the attendance and proficiency of the scholars, the qualifications of the teachers, and the state of the schools. APPENDIX. 4«3 6. No grants are made to elementar}’’ schools which are not public elementary schools within the meaning of the Elementary Education Act, 1870. 7. No grant is made in respect of any instruction in religious subjects. 8. Officers are em.pl eyed to verify the fulfilment of the conditions on which grants are made, to collect information, and to report the results to the Education Department. 9. These officers are inspectors appointed by Her Majesty, on the recommendation of the Education Department, and persons appointed by the Department, as occasion requires, in the capacity of acting inspectors, or inspectors’ assistants. : 10. No grant is paid except on a report from an inspector, showing that the conditions of the grant have been fulfilled. Preliminary Conditions. 17. Before any grant is made to a school (Article 4) the Education Department must be satisfied that — (a.) The school is conducted as a public elementary school (Article 6) ; and no child is refused admission to the school on other than reasonable grounds. (^.) The school is not carried on with a view to private emolument. ( Articles 28, 29. 3s. for passing in arithmetic. ) C. 1. The sum of 2s. per scholar, according to the average number of children, above 7 years of age, in attendance throughout the year (Article 26), if the scholars present on the day of examination, in the classes from which children are examined in Standards II. and III., show an intelligent and grammatical knowledge of the passages read. 2. A further sum of 2s. per head on the same average, if the classes from which children are examined in Standards IV. — VI., pass creditably in history and geography. 3. The extent of the examination is indicated by the passages printed in italics in Article 28. In districts where Gaelic is spoken the intelligence of the children examined, under this paragraph, in Standards II. and III., may be tested by requiring them to explain in Gaelic the meaning of the passage read. 4. The examination is not confined to the scholars who have made 250 (or 150) attendances ; and one half of the children, examined under this paragraph of Article 19, must pass creditably. 5. The mode of examination (whether oral or on paper) is left to the discretion of the inspector. * 20. 150 attendances (Article 23) qualify for examination — {a.) Scholars under any half-time Act. (5.) Boys above 10 in a rural district. {c.) Scholars residing two miles or upwards from the school. 21. If the time table of the school, in use throughout the year, has provided for one or more specific subjects of secular instruction according to the table in Schedule IV. — use of the school, solely in consequence of its being so employed, may, if necessary^ be counted in making up, — ■ 1. The 400 meetings of the school ; or, 2. The 250 attendances of any scholar who was under instruction in the school the week before it was occupied for election purposes. ii. If a school claiming annual grants for the first time has not been open for the whole year (Article 13) ; or, if a school has been closed during the year, under medical authority on account of a local epidemic, a proportionate reduction is made for the number of meet- ings (400) and attendances (250) required by this Article. APPENDIX. 517 a. A grant of 45. per subject maybe made for every da}" scholar, presented in Standards IV. — VI. (Article 28) who passes a satisfactory examination in not more than two of such subjects. h. Any scholar who has previously passed in Standard VI. may be presented for examination in any three of such specific subjects. c. The amount claimed under this Article is not taken into account in making any reduction under Article 32 (a.), 2. cL No grant may be claimed under this Article on account of any scholar who has been examined, in the same subject, within the preceding year, by the Department of Science and Art. THE END. VIRTUE AKD CO-, PUXSTEES, CITY ROAD, IX)NDON