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 EDUCATION 663 the Scottish Code: a provision enabling an inspector to elementary instruction only, nor new bodies concerning recommend deductions for specified faults in instruction, themselves with secondary instruction only, but single and a provision for the award of a merit certificate, to local authorities having cognizance of all the public be given to a scholar as the result of an individual examina- educational resources of a district. tion at the end of his or her school course; this latter The statistical returns of public elementary education for plan of a leaving certificate having been in practical the year ending 31st August 1900 show that while the working, with very satisfactory results, in France for many population of England and Wales was 32,526,075, there years. Neither of these expedients has yet been adopted were 31,313 separate departments under head teachers, by the Board of Education for England and Wales, but by of which 4060 were for boys, 3912 for girls, 15,300 for this or by some other means it will probably be found boys and girls (mixed), and 8041 for infants only. The necessary to make greater provision than the newest Code total numbers on the register were: in Church of England furnishes for stimulating apathetic school managers and schools, 2,300,150; in Wesleyan schools, 156,666 ; in teachers to make efforts for improvement, and for assuring Roman Catholic schools, 316,769; in British and other Parliament that its large annual grants are wisely, unsectarian schools, 269,421; and in schools under School economically, and fruitfully expended. Boards, 2,662,669. Thus the total of registered scholars The character of the instruction in the public elementary is 5,705,675, of whom only 6823 were 15 years of age and schools has in other ways been materially affected by the over. Accommodation was provided for 6,544,092, or system on which the central Department has awarded about 20T1 per cent, of the estimated population. But money payments. Successive Codes and Acts of Parlia- the total average attendance was 4,687,646. The staff of ment have recognized the age of fourteen as the limit teachers was composed of 64,038 certificated masters or of primary instruction; and after that age, and the com- mistresses, 32,436 adult assistants, 29,393 pupil teachers, pletion of the curriculum known as the “seventh standard,” and 17,512 additional assistants. the ordinary grant to elementary schools ceased to be There are at present no data from which similar statistics payable in the case of any scholar. But increasing numbers can be compiled respecting secondary schools. of scholars have shown a readiness to remain and pursue Experience has proved that the differentiation of primary an advanced course of instruction, without going on to and secondary and higher instruction cannot be determined schools of the higher or secondary rank. The Science and by enumerating the subjects proper to be taught Art Department has been for many years administering under each head. The true distinction is to be Secondary special grants for drawing, design, and various branches found by considering the probable age to which u**™' of science; and these grants have been still available for the period of instruction is to be extended. A scholars who had completed the elementary school course. course of educational discipline which is to end at the age Hence School Boards and Voluntary managers who have of fourteen is a primary or elementary course. The school desired to retain scholars after the age of 14 have been led which seeks to retain its pupil to the age of sixteen or by financial considerations to give special prominence to seventeen, and to prepare him to enter a skilled trade or those subjects for which grants were claimable from the one of the minor professions, is a secondary or intermediate Science and Art Department. But this has proved to be school; and one which has a curriculum designed to suit a partial and very inadequate provision, since the de- the requirements of a youth till the nineteenth year, and veloped programme of what are called “higher grade to qualify him for entrance to a University or one of the schools ” is often needed in the literary and general as learned professions, is an academic school of the highest well as in the specific and technical direction. A demand educational rank. In various degrees, science, technology, has arisen for schools or upper departments analogous manual instruction, classics, a modern language, history, to the ecoles primaires superieures which have proved geography, and mathematics may enter into the curriculum so successful in France. This want is being recognized of all three; but the character of the teaching miist in the by the Government. By the Act of 1900 the Science main be dominated by the length of the school-life. Local and Art Department ceases to have a separate existence circumstances and the probable destination of the majority and to make separate payments for special branches of of the scholars will rightly influence the choice and the science. The new Board of Education, by which title co-ordination of subjects ; but we may conclude, generally, the whilom Education Department is now known, is that whatever may be taught honestly and without precharged with the general supervision of primary and tension within the limits of age may be regarded as a secondary, including technical and scientific, instruction, legitimate part of a primary, a secondary, or a high school and will doubtless bring the various educational agencies course. Of Greek, for example, it may be safely said that, • into due relation to each other and make them take their as a rule, it could not be wisely introduced as a subject places as parts of one coherent system. In such a system either into a primary or an intermediate school, because a place must certainly be found for “ higher grade schools ” in such a school there would be no chance of carrying the such as have proved highly popular, especially in the course of instruction to the fruit-bearing stage; but othergreat industrial cities of the North. They are not wise there is no good reason for excluding from a school secondary schools, but merely places for continuing the of any one of the three grades the elements at least of instruction for an additional two or three years on the some subject which will stimulate the appetite for selfgeneral lines followed in good elementary schools. The improvement and serve as a good foundation for further precise relations which are to subsist between these acquisition after leaving school. institutions and others, and indeed the true delimitation The existing provision for secondary instruction in of the respective provinces of primary and secondary England has been hitherto furnished chiefly (a) by endowed instruction, are matters which have been the subject of grammar schools, (b) by proprietary schools established judicial decision and much debate. But they remain at by religious bodies or public companies, and (c) by private present unsettled, and await the decision of Parliament enterprise. An inquiry instituted by the Education and the new Board. One result of the existence of Department in 1898 with a view to ascertain the number higher grade schools occupying, as they do, a kind of of pupils in public and private, secondary and other schools borderland between primary and secondary instruction, in England, not being public elementary or technical will probably be that the future local authorities will no schools, resulted in a report to Parliament which was very longer be School Boards charged with the interests of significant of the varied and incoherent character of the