Page:Hints for the improvement of village schools and the introduction of industrial work.djvu/14

10 for girls, when made an appendage of the National Schools. It is, of course, difficult to calculate exactly, as so much must depend on details of management. Assuming, however, as I have proved by experience, that the baking and cooking need involve hardly any loss; assuming also, that on the average 15s. worth of washing is taken in per week, of which 10s. per week remain over, after paying for soap, starch, and coals; and reckoning that the industrial mistress, who of course must be a good laundress, receives a salary of 15s. a week, there will be a loss of 5s. a week or £13 a year. But against this we may place the Government allowance of 5s. per head for each girl under industrial instruction, which, if twenty girls are instructed, would amount to £5. So that the loss on an industrial department need not, I am persuaded, be any very serious charge on the funds of the National School to which it is appended. In no case do I think the loss need exceed about £12 a year. It is to be regretted that the Committee of Council, under their present regulations, give so little aid towards maintaining a school of this sort. If, instead of their present grant of 5s. a head for each girl under instruction, the Committee of Council would pay one-third of the salary of the industrial mistress, provided that at least twenty girls over ten years of age were under instruction, the cost to the public would be less than the cost of a single pupil-teacher; while the prospect of such assistance would lead to an immediate increase of the number of industrial schools, which could then be maintained without any great expense to the managers. Many of the clergy are already so hard pressed to maintain their schools, that it seems at first sight unreasonable to suggest the building and maintaining of an industrial school as an appendage to the existing establishments; but personally, I am persuaded, that the reason why our village schools are so costly to support, and oftentimes but half filled, is this, viz., that the education given is not such as the parents much value, nor such as the farmers will contribute to, or take any interest in. The plan I would suggest, and which is carried out successfully at Shipbourne, is to educate together in one school the children of all the farmers, tradesmen, artizans, and labourers in the parish, making each class pay as much as they can really afford, and adapting the education to the practical wants of each class; and I feel convinced, that a well-managed establishment of this kind will require for its support fewer subscriptions than an ordinary village school.

Under the present system the farmers, in many instances, send their children to private schools; or, if they send them to the National Schools, they do it with a sort of internal protest, as if they were demeaning themselves by only having to pay some