Page:Hints for the improvement of village schools and the introduction of industrial work.djvu/30

22 parts of the country, especially where the parishes are small, receive little or no assistance, not being able to meet the Government requirements, while richer and well-to-do parishes benefit largely. In large town schools the Capitation money amounts to a considerable sum, but in small agricultural parishes it seldom amounts to more than £3 or £4. The required attendance of one hundred and seventy-six days is very high for a country parish, when we take into account the great and increasing demand for juvenile labour, and the many contingencescontingencies [sic] by which a regular attendance is prevented. I might mention, as an instance to show the uncertainty of obtaining a Capitation grant, that two following years at Shipbourne, we have been forced to close the school, owing to the prevalence of some epidemic disease, and as no allowance is ever made for such emergencies, we of course forfeited the greater part of the Capitation grant for each of those years. I would venture to suggest that some deduction from the required attendance should be made, where a school is closed by the order of the medical officer of the district.

If a few modifications were made in the existing minutes principally with a view of giving assistance to poor parishes, I do not see how Parliamentary grants can be administered in a more just, or less objectionable form; our wisdom, I believe, speaking as a minister of the Church of England, is to take all that we can get in the way of State assistance, and, while we keep in our own hands the superintendence of the religious instruction, to adapt the secular teaching to the practical wants and requirements of our respective parishes. Since the publication of the first edition of this pamphlet, the Committee of Council, while on the one hand they have (very unwisely in my opinion) rigidly restricted the number of pupil-teachers to the proportion of one to every forty scholars, have on the other hand made a valuable concession in allowing young persons of sixteen years old and upwards to be apprenticed as pupil-teachers for two years (on condition of passing the third year examination) at a salary of £17. 10s. for the first year, and £20 for the second. The effect of this minute will be to draw into the teacher's office many young persons of a higher grade, who have been educated in private schools, but who, out of real love for the work, are anxious to be engaged in teaching and to receive that systematic instruction in the art, which can only be obtained in the training schools. Persons of this class are, to my mind, far better suited for the office of elementary teachers than the children of labourers, who are usually apprenticed at thirteen years old, an age at which it is scarcely possible for them to know their own minds, or to have manifested any peculiar fitness for their future vocation. Owing to the early age