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PART I
CHAPTER VI
MEASURES RECOMMENDED
OUTLINE OF THE CASE TO BE DEALT WITH
In the foregoing chapters we have stated, in considerable detail, the facts, furnished by the evidence collected by us, which illustrate the present state of popular education in England and Wales. We come now to the most difficult part of the undertaking with which we have been intrusted - the suggestion of the measures best fitted, in our judgment, to extend and improve the elementary education of the poor. As any suitable plan for this object must necessarily take into account the actual state of the case as now existing, we think a rapid summary of the broadest facts which our inquiry has elicited may fitly precede a statement of our proposals.
The whole population of England and Wales, as estimated by the Registrar-General in the summer of 1858, amounted to 19,523,103. The number of children whose names ought, at the same date, to have been on the school books, in order that all might receive some education, was 2,655,767. The number we found to be actually on the books was 2,535,462, thus leaving 120,305 children without any school instruction whatever. The proportion, therefore, of scholars in weekday schools of all kinds to the entire population was 1 in 7.7 or 12.99 percent. Of these 321,768 are estimated to have been above the condition of such as are commonly comprehended in the expression "poorer classes," and hence are beyond the range of our present inquiry. Deducting these from the whole number of children on the books of some school, we find that 2,213,694 children belonging to the poorer classes were, when our statistics were collected and compiled, receiving elementary instruction in day schools. Looking, therefore, at mere numbers as indicating the state of popular education in England and Wales, the proportion of children receiving instruction to the whole population is, in our opinion, nearly as high as can be reasonably expected. In Prussia, where it is compulsory, 1 in 6.27; in England and Wales it is, as we have seen, 1 in 7.7; in Holland it is 1 in 8.11; in France it is 1 in 9.0.
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Before passing on to a much less pleasing aspect of the case, we should scarcely be doing it justice without adverting briefly to the surprisingly rapid progress of elementary education in of education this country since the beginning of the century. The Committee of the House of Commons, of which Lord Brougham, then Mr. Brougham, was chairman, and which was appointed in 1818 to inquire into the education of the people, obtained returns from the parochial clergy of all the day schools existing at that date, distinguishing those which had been established since 1803. Similar returns were obtained by a Committee of the House of Commons in 1833, presided over by the Earl of Kerry. Since then, in 1851, a complete educational census has been taken. The first two returns were probably defective, but they must have been sufficiently near the truth to show with tolerable accuracy the rapid pace at which day-school education has been advancing in this country. In 1803 the number of day scholars was estimated at 524,211, or one in 17½ of the whole population at that date. In 1818 the numbers were 674,883, or 1 in 17¼ In 1833 they were 1,276,947, or 1 in 11¼. In 1851 they were 2,144,378, or 1 in 8.36; while in 1858, according to our own returns and estimate, they have risen to 2,535,462, or 1 in 7.7. These statistics prove the great and steady progress which has been made since the early part of the century, both in the extent of the provision made for the education of the poorer classes, and in their appreciation of its worth.
We are bound to observe, however, that a very delusive estimate of the state of education must result from confining attention to the mere amount of numbers under day-school instruction. We have seen that less than three years ago there were in elementary day schools 2,213,694 children of the poorer classes. But of this number, 573,486 were attending private schools, which, as our evidence uniformly shows, are, for the most part, inferior as schools for the poor, and ill-calculated to give to the children an education which shall be serviceable to them in after-life. Of the 1,540,312 children whose names are on the books of public elementary day schools belonging to the religious denominations, only 19.3 per cent were in their 12th year or upwards, and only that proportion, therefore, can be regarded as educated up to the standard suited to their stations. As many as 786,202 attend for less than 100 days in the year and can therefore hardly receive a serviceable amount of education, while our evidence goes to prove that a large proportion,
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even of those whose attendance is more regular, fail in obtaining it on account of inefficient teaching. Much, therefore, still remains to be done to bring up the state of elementary education in England and Wales to the degree of usefulness which we all regard as attainable and desirable.
The aid rendered by the Committee of Council in this important work our evidence shows to have been extremely valuable. But for obvious reasons, the plan on which it has been given has produced results falling far short of what is required. In the first place, very few of the smaller schools, in comparison of the larger, have been able to fulfil the conditions on which alone they could avail themselves of it; and secondly, as a consequence, assistance has not reached those which stand in greatest need of it. At the date of our statistical inquiries, it assisted 6,897 schools, containing 917,255 scholars; but it left unassisted 15,750 denominational schools, and about 317 Birkbeck, Ragged, and Factory Schools, containing altogether 671,393 scholars, while the whole of the private schools, in which 578,536 children attended, were entirely passed over. It may be fairly assumed that even the unassisted schools have profited to some extent by the stimulus indirectly applied to them by the aid rendered to the assisted, owing to which aid the standard of elementary education has been generally raised; but the facts which we have stated above show that the system has not effected, and we have reason to believe that it is not adapted to effect, a general diffusion of sound elementary education amongst all classes of the poor.
One other point deserves attention; it relates rather to the kind than to the amount of the instruction given in our public elementary schools to the children attending them. The children do not, in fact, receive the kind of education they require. We have just noticed the extravagant disproportion between those who receive some education and those who receive a sufficient education. We know that the uninspected schools are in this respect far below the inspected; but even with regard to the inspected, we have seen overwhelming evidence from Her Majesty's Inspectors, to the effect that not more than one-fourth of the children receive a good education. So great a failure in the teaching demanded the closest investigation; and as the result of it we have been obliged to come to the conclusion that the instruction given is commonly both too ambitious and too superficial in its character, that (except in the very best schools) it has been too exclusively adapted to the elder scholars to the neglect of the younger ones, and that it often omits to secure a thorough grounding in the
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simplest but most essential parts of instruction. We have shown that the present system has never completely met this serious difficulty in elementary teaching; that inspection looks chiefly to the upper classes and to the general condition of the school, and cannot profess to examine carefully individual scholars; and that a main object of the schools is defeated in respect of every child who, having attended for a considerable time, leaves without the power of reading, writing, and cyphering in an intelligent manner.
The foregoing review discloses to us the main defects in the existing state of popular education which any practical recommendations should aim to correct. Passing over all the minor changes which may be usefully adopted, mention of which will be found in other parts of this Report, we are agreed that our recommendations should tend to secure the following results. First, that all the children who attend the elementary day schools of the country should be induced to attend with sufficient regularity to enable them, within a reasonable period, to obtain a mastery over the indispensable elements of knowledge, reading, writing, and the primary rules of arithmetic; secondly, that all the schools in the country at which the children of the poor attend should be qualified and induced to put this amount of instruction within reach of their pupils; and, thirdly, that this should be done in such a way as not to lower the general standard of elementary instruction to this its lowest level of usefulness. How best to do these things appears to us to be the problem we have to solve, and the measures we have agreed to recommend have been framed with a view to its solution.
Before entering upon the fuller consideration of the measures by which we propose to attain these objects, it may be desirable to review the plans which from time to time have been proposed for the improvement of popular education, whether by extending the present system or by substituting another in its place. These will be best considered under the three heads of, first, proposals for leaving education to be provided by the voluntary contributions of parents or of charitable persons; secondly, proposals for the opposite plan of a compulsory State education; thirdly, proposals for substituting a system of rating for the present system adopted by Government. It is true that in theory the two latter proposals might be combined, but practically they have been kept separate. We shall then state the merits and defects of the present system, and propose means for its modification and extension.
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SECTION I
PLANS WHICH HAVE BEEN PROPOSED FOR IMPROVING AND EXTENDING POPULAR EDUCATION
1. EDUCATION TO BE PROVIDED BY VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS
It has often been considered that the poor would be able to educate their children successfully without any further assistance than that of charitable persons; and this course has been recommended by many of those who are interested in popular education, who believe that the interference of Government with education is objectionable on political and religious grounds, and that it retards educational progress. It is right here to state, in speaking on this subject, that there exists among the members of the Commission, as among the nation at large, deeply seated differences of opinion with regard to the duty of Government in this country towards education.
The greater portion of the members of the Commission are of opinion that the course pursued by the Government in 1839, in recommending a grant of public money for the assistance of education, was wise; that the methods adopted to carry out that object have proved successful; and that while it is expedient to make considerable alterations in the form in which this public assistance is given, it would not be desirable either to withdraw it or largely to diminish its amount. Without entering into general considerations of the duty of a State with regard to the education of the poorer classes of a community, they think it sufficient to refer to the fact that all the principal nations of Europe, and the United States of America, as well as British North America, have felt it necessary to provide for the education of the people by public taxation; and to express their own belief that, when the grant to education was first begun, the education of the greater portion of the labouring classes had long been in a neglected state, that the parents were insensible to its advantages, and were (and still continue to be) in most cases incapable from poverty of providing it for their children, and that religious and charitable persons, interested in the condition of the poor, had not the power to supply the main cost of an education which, to be good, must always be expensive. They are further of opinion that, although the advance of education during the last 20 years has led to a wider and more just sense of its advantages, the
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principal reasons which originally rendered the assistance of Government desirable still form a valid ground for its continuance, partly because large portions of the country have been unable to obtain a due share in the advantages of the grant, and in the improvements in education which have resulted from its operation, partly because there is still no prospect that the poor will be able by the assistance of charitable persons to meet the expense of giving an education to their children. They believe, therefore, that a withdrawal to any considerable extent of the public grant would have a tendency to check the general advance of education, and to give up much of the ground which has been won; and while they think that the present method of distributing the grant has many disadvantages, they believe them to consist in the manner in which the principle of giving public aid is applied and carried out, and not in the principle itself. Upon these grounds they have endeavoured in various parts of their report to indicate the points in which improvements are necessary, and the manner in which they may be most effectually introduced.
The minority admit that the responsibilities and functions of Government may be enlarged by special circumstances, and in cases where political disasters have retarded the natural progress of society. But they hold that in a country situated politically and socially as England is, Government has, ordinarily speaking, no educational duties, except towards those whom destitution, vagrancy, or crime casts upon its hands. They make no attempt at this distance of time to estimate the urgency of the circumstances which originally led the Government of this country to interfere in popular education. They fully admit that much good has been done by means of the grant; though they think it not unlikely that more solid and lasting good would have been done, that waste would have been avoided, that the different wants of various classes and districts would have been more suitably supplied, that some sharpening of religious divisions in the matter of education would have been spared, and that the indirect effects upon the character of the nation, and the relations between class and class would have been better, had the Government abstained from interference, and given free course to the sense of duty and the benevolence which, since the mind of the nation has been turned from foreign war to domestic improvement, have spontaneously achieved great results in other directions.
These members of the Commission desire that a good type of schools and teachers having now been extensively introduced, the benefits of popular education having been manifested, and public
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interest in the subject having been thoroughly awakened, Government should abstain from making further grants, except grants for the building of schools, to which the public assistance was originally confined, and the continuance of which will be fair towards the parishes which have hitherto received no assistance; that the annual grants which are now made should be gradually withdrawn; and that Government should confine its action to the improvement of union schools, reformatories, and schools connected with public establishments, at the same time developing to the utmost the resources of the public charities, which either are or may be made applicable to popular education, and affording every facility which legislation can give to private munificence in building and endowing schools for the poor. It appears to them that if the State proceeds farther in its present course, and adopts as definitive the system which has hitherto been provisional, it will be difficult hereafter to induce parental and social duty to undertake the burden which it ought to bear, or to escape from the position, neither just in itself nor socially expedient, that large and ill-defined classes of the people are entitled, without reference to individual need, or to the natural claims which any of them, may possess on the assistance of masters and employers, to have their education paid for, in part at least, out of the public taxes. Nor do they feel confident that Government will ever be able to control the growing expenditure and multiplying appointments of a department, the operations of which are regulated by the increasing and varying demands of philanthropists rather than by the definite requirements of the public service.
They have felt it their duty, however, to regard the question as it stands after twenty-nine years of a policy opposed to their own; and on the rejection of their own view, they cordially adopt, in the second resort, the scheme of assistance approved by the majority of their colleagues, which they regard as better in every respect, and above all as a far nearer approach to justice, than the present extremely partial system.
We have thought fit to state the differences existing among us on this important point. It must not be inferred that this is the only matter on which we differ. In a subject involving so many statements, so many inferences, so many general principles, and so many executive details, universal concurrence was not to be expected, and has not in fact been obtained.
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2. COMPULSORY EDUCATION ENFORCED BY THE STATE
The possibility of establishing a system of compulsory education in this country has been brought before us in considering the extent to which it is desirable to enforce the "half-time system" in manufacturing employments. In the third chapter, while examining the objections which are often brought against enforcing the attendance at school of children collected together in certain trades and manufactures, we gave an account of those systems of compulsory education by the State which are now established in Prussia and in other parts of Germany. Our opinion of the applicability of such a system in this country was there indicated, and may be now briefly repeated. We are of opinion that it would be impossible to carry it out except in cases where children are working together in considerable bodies, and where the inspector can therefore ascertain the regularity of their attendance. Any universal compulsory system appears to us neither attainable nor desirable. In Prussia, indeed, and in many parts of Germany, the attendance can scarcely be termed compulsory; Though the attendance is required by law, it is a law which entirely expresses the convictions and wishes of the people. Such a state of feeling renders the working of a system of compulsion, among a people living under a strict government, comparatively easy. Our own condition, it need scarcely be stated, is in many respects essentially different. But we also found that the results of this system, as seen in Prussia, do not appear to be so much superior to those which have been already attained amongst ourselves by voluntary efforts, as to make us desire an alteration which would be opposed to the feelings, and, in some respects, to the principles of this country. An attempt to replace an independent system of education by a compulsory system, managed by the Government, would be met by objections, both religious and political, of a far graver character in this country than any with which it has had to contend in Prussia; and we have seen that, even in Prussia, it gives rise to difficulties which are not insignificant. And therefore, on the grounds of a long-established difference between our own position and that of the countries where a compulsory system is worked successfully; on the grounds of the feelings, both political, social, and religious, to which it would be opposed; and also on the ground that our education is advancing successfully without it, we have not thought that a scheme for compulsory education to be universally applied in this country can be entertained as a practical possibility.
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3. EDUCATION PROVIDED BY A SYSTEM OF PAROCHIAL RATING
The plan of providing for the better extension of education by local taxation, in the form of parochial rates, deserves attentive consideration on different grounds from the preceding proposals. It has been often brought forward in Parliament, sometimes as a supplement to, and sometimes as a substitute for, the existing system; it possesses the obvious recommendation, that if it were enforced by law it would carry the means of education into every parish in the country; it is an attempt to make education universal, and at the same time is more in harmony with our institutions than the plan of compulsory education given by the State; compared with voluntary subscriptions it distributes the burden equally; it has been thought that it would not necessarily destroy the independence of the existing schools, nor injuriously affect the character of the teaching; and its supporters have maintained that it would lead to an increased local interest in education; while, by giving an united teaching to the children of different religious communities, it would encourage religious toleration.
Our opinion is unfavourable to the particular form of parochial rating, for reasons which we shall presently state. But we are alive to many of the advantages with which such a plan is accompanied, and as we propose ourselves to recommend that the public assistance given to schools shall be derived in part from local taxation, we wish to state distinctly the reasons which have decided us against the plan of parochial rating.
1. It is undoubtedly true that a compulsory system of parochial rating would establish school buildings, and supply the means of payment for education in all parts of the country more rapidly than any other system. But though these advantages are great, they would not necessarily secure the means of imparting a good education; there is no reason to doubt that they might be obtained, though not so immediately, by a different method; and the very fact of their being gained immediately might give rise to the evils which attend upon the premature establishment of a system for which the country is not prepared. Parishes are, indeed, seldom unprovided with school buildings, though they often require improvement; and little would be done either by an increase of buildings, or even of educational funds, unless it were accompanied by the establishment of an efficient system, unless the management were placed in the best hands, and unless security
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were taken for the ability of the master and the energy of his teaching.
It is also worthy of remark that most of the difficulties connected with parochial rating attach to the recommendation to build and establish schools out of the rates. It is quite possible to support a school already in existence by a rate in aid, and yet leave its management and its religious teaching substantially free, and proposals to this effect were made both in the Manchester Bill and in the Bill of Sir John Pakington. But if it is proposed to build a school from the rates, the management naturally belongs to the ratepayer, and the difficulties about its management and its religious teaching immediately appear. We have therefore ourselves recommended to build no schools by means of rates, but merely to provide by this means for a part of their support.
2. But most of the proposals for parochial rating have recommended that the ratepayers should substantially be entrusted with schools the management or the schools; and we do not think that such a body would manage them as well as they are managed at present. Where the object is felt to be of immediate local interest and advantage the ratepayers are the proper persons to pay for and to superintend the matter. The rates are also a proper fund for expenses in respect of which it is desirable to exercise vigilant and minute economy, and they are accordingly charged with the support of paupers. The support of a good school does not fall under either of these heads. No doubt it is a matter of immediate local interest and advantage, but it is not at present felt and acknowledged to be so by the great majority of persons contributing to the rate. The whole history of Popular Education in England shows that the contrary is the truth. What has been done towards its advancement has been done by a charitable and enlightened minority, assisted by the Government. The principal difficulties with which the promoters of education have to contend arise in many, if not in most, places from the imperfect appreciation of the subject on the part of the classes who, in the event of a parochial rate, would manage the schools. We are aware that many schools are well managed by a large body of subscribers; and it is often said that if ratepayers were intrusted by law with the management of the system, they would learn to take an intelligent interest in it. We believe that in the course of time this would prove to be the case, but in the interval the schools would suffer, their most active and intelligent friends would be discouraged, and many of the principal improvements in education, such
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as the employment of trained masters and pupil-teachers, might in many cases be given up.
We have observed upon the importance to schools of liberal and sympathising treatment, and have pointed out that the whole subject of education is experimental and progressive. This makes it most necessary that the management of schools should be in the hands of persons who feel a genuine interest in the subject, are willing to bear with disappointments and shortcomings in the hopes of ultimately attaining a satisfactory result, and are ready to try experiments and adopt suggestions for increasing the efficiency of the schools. We do not think that a committee of ratepayers would be likely at present to act in this spirit.
It is undoubtedly true that a system of parochial rating, if it became national, would be far more economical than a system of central aid, like the present, locally administered; and this is a fact upon which we shall frequently have occasion to insist, and which is, as far as it goes, certainly a recommendation of any rating system. It is, however, outweighed in our opinion by the opposite danger, that in the event of intrusting parochial authorities with the management of schools, many of the most essential expenses would either be refused or granted with great reluctance. Good elementary education cannot be obtained without considerable expense, and this is a conclusion which parochial bodies would be reluctant to admit. We have shown elsewhere that the most important improvements which have taken place in popular education are due to the introduction of trained teachers, and that they are greatly superior to untrained teachers in dealing with the most ignorant children. These considerations, however, would probably have little weight with the governing bodies which, under a system of parochial rating, would have the chief management of schools. The assertions that a highly trained man is not wanted to teach poor children to read and write, that the trained teachers are likely to be conceited, above their work, insubordinate, and dissatisfied with their position, are just the sort of fallacies which would mislead careless observers. The experience of the majority of workhouse schools leads us to fear that the consequence of putting the management of the schools into the hands of the parochial bodies would be that trained teachers and pupil-teachers would in a great measure cease to be employed, and that the whole standard of elementary education would be lowered. There exist indeed some excellent schools for pauper children; but in most cases it is only under pressure from the Poor Law Board that the Boards of guardians have been induced to appoint competent teachers.
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When left to themselves, they almost always made unsatisfactory appointments; and though (as we shall have occasion to observe more fully hereafter) there are special difficulties connected with pauper education, the way in which it has been generally managed by the boards of guardians is certainly not encouraging as evidence of the fitness of similar bodies to undertake the management of elementary schools.*
3. We think that if it were resolved to establish a system under which schools should be founded and supported out of the rates, difficulties would arise as to the religious teaching to be given in them, and as to the authority which the clergy of different denominations should exercise over them, which would probably prevent such a measure from passing through Parliament, and would prevent it from working in an harmonious manner if it did. Our opinion on this subject is founded principally on past experience. Difficulties of this kind, as we have elsewhere observed, prevented the Committee of Council from recommending the foundation of a Normal College in connexion with the State. Similar difficulties defeated the attempt to establish a national system of education in 1839, and to establish a system specially adapted for the factories in 1842. The difficulty as to the Normal Colleges was overcome by the establishment of upwards of 30 Training Colleges connected in the closest way with different denominations. And meanwhile many thousand elementary schools have been established in the course of the last 20 years, almost all of which are specially connected with some one religious denomination, in many cases by foundation deeds, which give legal security for the permanence of the connexion. These facts show that amongst those who really manage popular education, there are deep-seated differences of principle which operate strongly on their minds, and are very unlikely to be removed.
It may be urged that little has been heard of such differences for some years past, that the parents of the children to be educated are, generally speaking, comparatively indifferent to the subject, and that consequently whatever may have been the case formerly, no serious difficulty would be found at present in providing a common constitution for the schools supported by the rates, and in making arrangements as to the teaching in them which would be acceptable to all. We think this a mistake. It is quite true that for several years little has been heard of religious differences in the management of schools, and we do not anticipate that anything will be heard of them in future so long
*See both sides of the case stated in Mr. Temple's evidence, 2921-2925.
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as the constitution of the schools remains untouched. The quiet which has prevailed arises from the independence of the different denominations and their undisturbed possession of their respective provinces, but there is no reason to suppose that the circumstance of their having occupied this position for upwards of twenty years would dispose them to exchange it for another. On the contrary, the difficulties would be greater now than they formerly were.
In his evidence, Dr. Temple strongly advocates the support of schools out of the rates, but in answer to a question whether "the distribution of the funds would not be a bone of contention amongst various denominations?" he said, "I think that for the first 10 or 15 years there might be considerable difficulties, but I think that they would all wear out; and I do not think that a legislature has a right only to look at the next 10 or 15 years." In support of his opinion that these difficulties might be overcome, Dr. Temple referred to the Management Clauses which excited great opposition when they were first proposed by the Committee of Council, but were ultimately accepted, and have since that time caused no difficulty.
We do not think that this inference is just. The general character of the controversy about the Management Clauses was as follows: The Committee of Council made it a condition of their building grants that a certain constitution should be provided by the foundation deed for the schools to be built with that assistance. It was admitted that such a constitution must be provided, and the substantial question was whether the founders of the school should be allowed to give a greater or a less amount of authority to the clerical members of the Committee of Managers.
This discussion, as Dr. Temple observes, produced a warm controversy, but the excitement produced was not between different denominations, but in the case of the Church of England, between different parties in the same denomination, and in the case of the Roman Catholics, between a single denomination and the Committee of Council. No difficulty arose with the other denominations. The question debated with most warmth was this, whether the National Society in the one case, and the Catholic Poor School Committee in the other, should or should not recommend members of their respective denominations to accept certain grants of public money on particular terms. They at length determined to do so, and experience having shown that the terms were unobjectionable, no difficulty has arisen in consequence.
The question of a general system of national education sup-
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ported by rates, is very different from this, and depends upon deeply seated differences of principle which could hardly fall to produce constant bickerings and jealousies in a variety of everyday transactions. A few observations on the nature of the principles on which the parties differ will make this clear. Both agree, in common with the great mass of the nation, in looking upon education as essentially connected with religion. The clergy of the Church of England look upon their own denomination as the established religion of the nation, and they would feel that that fact gave them a right to a leading part In the management of any general system of education established by the State. A large proportion of the Dissenters, on the other hand, disapprove of any connexion between the Church and the State, and entertain conscientious objections to conferring upon the clergy, as such, any official connexion whatever with public education. If such a position were conferred upon them by law it would be felt to be exclusive, and the exercise of the powers which it conferred would be scrutinized with jealousy, and would be a constant occasion of bad feeling and disputes, If, on the other hand, it were withheld the clergy would feel themselves aggrieved, and would consider that the State had not recognized their claims. They would thus dislike the system, and would probably be reluctant to give to it that cordial co-operation which would be so important as to be almost indispensable to its success.
In some parts of the country, to the differences between Protestant bodies would be further added the wider differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics. These last excite so much warmth that they influence the parents as well as the managers. Mr. Cumin was told by workmen in Bristol and Plymouth, that though they would not object, if churchmen, to send their children to dissenting schools, or vice versa, they would send them to no school at all rather than a Roman Catholic one. The Roman Catholic week-day schools contain more scholars than any others except the Church of England and the British schools, so that this difficulty would be very serious.
Without expressing any opinion as to the success of the common schools in the United States of America and Canada, it may be well to point out that their establishment affords no proof that a similar system could be introduced into this country. In those countries there is no established church, and thus the difficulty as to the position of the clergy does not arise. Besides this the different classes of society are much more on a level than is the case in this country, and the common schools which are supported
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at the expense of all are made use of by all. Education moreover being almost universal, its importance is universally appreciated, and there is no fear that it will be managed in an illiberal or inefficient manner.
In the meanwhile it is not to be denied that many of the arguments in favour of a rate-supported system, and especially that which lays stress on the importance of arousing and sustaining local interest, have great weight; the more so because the want of local interest and of proper local support is the leading defect in the present system, - a defect which would render its permanent establishment throughout the whole country a very questionable benefit. Nor do the preceding observations apply to the principle of throwing on the rates some share of the burden of popular education, but only to the consequences which follow from the form in which most of the suggestions for a rating system have been cast. The most serious of these consequences, in our opinion, are those which touch the management and the independence of the schools. But the economy and the local interest which some amount of local payment and management secures, appears to us essential elements in a system of national education.
The dangerous consequences to which we have just referred, and the necessity for avoiding them, are seen, in our opinion, very distinctly in the history of the various measures by which a system of parochial rating for the purpose of education has been proposed to the House of Commons. Subsequent to the attempt to introduce a modified rating system into the Factories Regulation Act of 1842, five measures have been proposed bearing this character, the Manchester Bill, the Borough Bill in 1852, and the three bills of Lord John Russell, Sir J. Pakington, and Mr. Cobden, in 1855. It would be out of place to enter into any discussion of these measures; but we wish to indicate the points upon which the most carefully prepared schemes of parochial rating appear to have failed. We are assisted in this by the opinion of Sir James K. Shuttleworth, who gave us a full account of two of these Bills, which were in a great measure prepared by his own advice.* The education clauses in Sir James Grahams Factory Bill of 1842 seem to have been withdrawn, because they were supposed to invade the independence of the dissenting bodies; the Manchester Bill, which, according to Sir J. K. Shuttleworth, was "framed with remarkable skill in almost every detail," failed, partly because the ratepayers would not accept a burden of from 6d to 9d in the pound without
*See, with regard to all these points, the evidence of Sir J. K. Shuttleworth, q. 2413.
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a large share in the management of the schools, and partly too because it appeared to endanger the religious character of the teaching; and precisely the same points were urged against the three measures of 1855, that they threatened the independence of the religious teaching, and the good management of the schools. We express here no opinion with regard to any of these measures, beyond saying, that we do not see how either of these objects can be secured where the management is mainly committed to the ratepayers, or where the teaching is not left with the religious denomination to which the school belongs. In one of the leading principles on which many of these Bills were founded, that of calling forth local action as an essential requisite for any national system, we must express our agreement; but even this advantage would be dearly bought if it prevented the intelligent management or injured the religious character of schools, the support of which has been both the merit and the success of the present system.
SECTION II
EXAMINATION OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT AID AND INSPECTION
Having shown the difficulties which would impede the establishment of any of the above systems of education, we shall now proceed to examine the plan which has been adopted by the Committee of Council, and to consider the possibility of retaining it as a permanent national system. Its leading principle is, that persons interested in the education of the poor, should, under the assistance and inspection of the State, be encouraged to provide education; it professes not to educate, but to assist in educating; and while it inspects schools in order to secure their proficiency, it leaves their internal management free. It has been very successful, and the arguments in its favour have considerable weight.
The first of these is that the present system is in possession of the ground, and the question can no longer be considered as altogether open. It is true, no doubt, that it has never been definitively adopted by the nation at large. This is shown by the fact that it is supported by annual votes, and that it has been constantly the subject of parliamentary discussion; but it is also true that though the discussion has lasted at intervals for upwards of 21 years, no other system has been devised which the nation
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could be induced to adopt, and this raises a strong presumption that the deliberate feeling of the public is in favour of the existing system.
This, however, is not all. During the last 20 years several thousand schools have been established in connexion with the system in different parts of the country. These schools are private property, and the founders of many of them are still living. They are connected with particular religious denominations, and the fact of that connexion formed the chief inducement to the subscribers to contribute towards their foundation. Their foundation deeds were drawn up in a great measure under the direction of the Government. The managers would, in our opinion, be very harshly treated if the assistance at present given to them were transferred to schools founded on a different principle, without any proof that they had failed to render the services for which the grants were paid, or if they were refused further contributions except upon the terms of altering the constitution which they were so lately compelled by public authority to accept, and upon the faith of which such contributions were made.
The next consideration is the success of the present system. The facts stated in the first section of this chapter are the best proof of this. Although essentially a voluntary system, and demanding great previous exertions as a condition of giving aid, it has, within twenty years of its commencement, either led to the foundation of or greatly improved 9,388 schools, or about two-fifths Schools, of the entire number of existing public schools, which contain 1,101,545 scholars, or about half the number now under instruction in the whole country. It assists largely in supporting 32 Training colleges, the greater number of which it helped to establish; and while the Government has itself expended on national education, in round numbers, £4,400,000, it has been met by voluntary subscriptions to the amount of £8,800,000. Its system of inspection has raised the standard of education, and by the careful training of its teachers, and, above all, by the introduction of pupil-teachers, it has supplied the best means for teaching in schools. There are, indeed, some important drawbacks to these advantages, but they are such as could be remedied without interference with the main principles of the system, and the remedies themselves would enable it to extend itself with even increased advantage.
It is a further recommendation of the present system that it secures the services of a class of managers, and excites feelings on
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their part, which have a most beneficial influence on the whole character of Popular Education. The managers are generally persons whose interest in the matter is of a religious and charitable kind, and though it is sometimes asserted that the zeal which actuates them is polemical and unhealthy, aiming rather at increasing the numbers and the influence of particular denominations than at promoting the interests of the class under education, we do not think that this criticism is just.
The evidence which we have collected shows that the state of feeling which prompts the foundation, and is produced by the maintenance of the schools is, with rare exceptions, of a very healthy kind. The reports of the Assistant Commissioners refer to a few cases in which angry and controversial feelings have been produced by indiscretion or misunderstandings, but the number of these cases is very small, and in the vast majority of instances the management of the schools appears to produce nothing but good and kindly feelings amongst all the parties concerned. The fact, to which we have referred more than once, that the children of different denominations frequently attend the same schools, shows that the schools are not conducted in a controversial spirit. It is an easy task to excite sectarian bitterness and hostility, especially amongst the ignorant, and if school managers were actuated by such feelings they would readily find means to gratify them through the agency of the teachers. It is not asserted that they do so. There are cases, it is true, where the benefit of a school is refused to children unless they will accept particular formularies or attend a particular place of worship. We greatly lament an illiberality which is equally short-sighted and unjust, and which in smaller parishes may have the effect of excluding children from the only good school. But we believe such a practice to be rare. With hardly an exception the schools are places of education and nothing more. This being the case, it appears too plain to require illustration, that it is desirable that they should be under the management of persons who show their interest in the subject of education by voluntary subscriptions towards its maintenance.
We think, also, that the existing plan is the only one by which it would be possible to secure the religious character of popular education. It is unnecessary for us to enter upon proof of the assertion that this is desirable in Itself. It is enough for our purpose to say that there is strong evidence that it is the deliberate opinion of the great majority of persons in this country that it is desirable. Some evidence has already been given upon this sub-
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ject of the feelings of the parents of the children to be educated. Those of the nation at large are proved by the fact that, with hardly an exception, every endowment for purposes of education, from the universities down to the smallest village school, has been connected by its founders with some religious body. The colleges of the University of London are a remarkable instance of this. Each of them is distinguished from the rest by its aspect towards religion. University College, which excludes religious instruction from its course, stands alone; but most of the affiliated colleges are connected with religious denominations, as King's College with the Church of England, and Stonyhurst and Oscott with the Roman Catholics. The controversies which have occurred in the course of the last 20 years, the difficulties which they have thrown in the way of the establishment of any comprehensive system, and their practical result in the establishment of the denominational Training Colleges and elementary schools, appear to us to place beyond all doubt the conclusion that the great body of the population are determined that religion and education must be closely connected, and we do not think that any other principle than that which is the base of the present system would secure this result.
It has been supposed that the object of securing the religious character of education might be equally attained either by restricting the teaching given in the schools to points upon which different denominations agree, or by drawing a broad line between the religious and the secular instruction, and by providing that the religious instruction should be given at particular hours, and by the ministers of different denominations. We do not think that either of these expedients would be suitable to the state of feeling in this country.
With respect to the plan of restricting the teaching to points agreed upon, we may refer to the history of the British and Foreign School Society. Undenominational teaching was its distinctive principle, but all the schools, including British and others which are founded on that principle, contain only about 14.4 per cent of the scholars in public schools, whilst the remaining 85.6 per cent are in denominational schools. The British schools are for the most part large schools in towns, and are usually established where the various dissenting bodies, not being numerous enough to establish denominational schools, prefer a British school to one connected with the Church of England. Religious communities, when able to do so, always appear to prefer schools of their own to schools on the undenominational principle.
The British and Foreign School Society is the oldest of all the
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societies connected with education, and might for a considerable time have been regarded as the representative of all the bodies which were not satisfied with the principles of the National Society; but in the course of the last 18 years the Wesleyans and the Independents have established boards of their own.
The plan of drawing a line between religious and secular instruction, and confining the religious instruction to particular hours, would, we believe, be equally unlikely to succeed. The principal promoters of education maintain that such a line cannot be drawn, and that every subject which is not merely mechanical, such as writing and working sums, but is connected with the feelings and conduct of mankind, may and ought to be made the occasion of giving religious instruction. They maintain that the religious influence of the school depends no less upon the personal character and example of the teacher, on the manner in which he administers discipline, upon the various opportunities which he takes for enforcing religious truth, and on the spirit in which he treats his pupils and teaches them to treat each other, than upon the distinctive religious teaching.
Upon this subject we would direct attention to the following resolution of the Wesleyan Committee of Education in reference to a Bill introduced by Sir J. Pakington:
"That while it has ever been the fixed rule in Wesleyan schools during the teaching of the catechism, to permit the absence of any child whose parents should object to his being taught such formulary, and to leave all children free to attend on the Sabbath whatever Sunday school and place of worship their parents may prefer, this Committee believes that the Wesleyan community will never consent that the teaching of religion itself in their schools shall be subject to restriction. Their experience shows, that besides the Scripture lesson with which their schools daily open, and in which it is sought to make divine truth intelligible to children of all capacities, an able Christian teacher will find throughout the day, when teaching geography, history, physical and moral science, and the knowledge of common things, frequent occasion to illustrate and enforce the truths of religion, and that religious teaching may be made to impart life and spirit to the whole process of education."
The above reasons which have been dwelt upon in other parts of our Report are the principal ones which induce us to believe, while we are prepared to suggest means both for its modification and extension, that the leading principles of the present system are sound, that they have shown themselves well adapted to the feelings of the country, and that they ought to be maintained. Its
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drawbacks, however, are not only considerable in themselves, but would be greatly increased if it were allowed to extend itself unaltered over the whole country. In that case defects, which even taken singly are formidable, might if united so impede the administration of the central office, so greatly increase its expenditure, and so injuriously affect the character of the education, that it would be doubtful whether the continuance of the system would be a national benefit. These defects, which we shall now proceed to consider, consist: (1) In the excessive expenditure which is likely to be thrown on the central revenue for an object the benefits of which are chiefly local. (2) In the difficulty without such an undue expenditure in assisting a large number of schools entitled to assistance. (3) In the defective teaching of elementary subjects. (4) In the complicated business of the office, which would be unmanageable if the present system became national.
The two first of these defects are closely connected, but we shall endeavour to consider them separately.
DEFECTS OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM
1. EXPENSE AND ITS TENDENCY TO INCREASE
Before we enter on the consideration of the expense of public assistance to the education of the poorer classes, and its tendency to increase, we desire to say that we think it unreasonable to object to it simply on both or either of these grounds. If it be assumed that it is proper for the State to render pecuniary aid towards the education of the lower classes, a large expenditure, where the area is so large, will be a necessary consequence; and upon the same assumption it cannot be denied that the object is among the worthiest on which the public money can be expended. Again, if the money be wisely and successfully applied, it is to be desired and expected that indefinitely for some considerable time the number of schools seeking to avail themselves of the public aid will increase as improved education is more and more widely diffused, and operates more powerfully on the public mind. One legitimate result of this, however, in a system which is based on assisting local exertion, ought to be a higher and more practical feeling of their duty by parents to provide for the education of their children; with this may be reasonably expected an increased liberality, on the part of the higher classes, to assist their poorer neighbours in the discharge of this great duty, and thenceforward we should have a right to look for a decrease, gradual at first,
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and then rapid, in the demands on the public purse. We believe this to be the true and not visionary view under which the expense of giving aid to education and its tendency to increase are, of themselves, to be regarded. But this leaves open all considerations as to the detail and economy of the system, and also as to the propriety of throwing some share of the burthen on other funds than the central revenue. To these points we now address ourselves.
According to the most careful estimate we have been able to make, which is based upon a calculation of an increase in the number of pupil-teachers, and in the augmentation grant, the extension of the general system to the whole country would cost about £1,300,000, if the unassisted public schools alone were brought under it. If the scholars in private schools were added the sum would amount to about £1,620,000. And supposing an increase in the number of scholars of 20 per cent, in consequence of an improvement in attendance, it would be increased to about £1,800,000 yearly. To this sum, if the present system were unaltered, would have to be added a capitation grant for 2,300,000 children; and at the present rate of attendance, which is an increasing one, at least 800,000 of these would earn 6s a head. This would make the whole grant amount to nearly £2,100,000 a year.
Even supposing this to be the extreme point to which the present grant could possibly reach, it seems to us too large a sum to throw upon the general revenue for an object, the benefits of which are in great measure local. We shall give our reasons for this opinion hereafter, but it is desirable previously to consider the possibility that the expenditure on the present system may even exceed this calculation. The estimate we have just given as to the number of children agrees substantially with those of Sir J. Kay Shuttle worth, Mr. Horace Mann, and Mr. Lingen. Mr. Lingen reckons the entire expenses of the public aid to education, (including training schools, inspection, office, &c.,) at about 18s a child. Sir James K. Shuttleworth thinks it probable that for the next five years the grant will increase at the rate of nearly £100,000/. a year, and adds that one of the reasons for the introduction of the Manchester Rating Bill was "an apprehension that Parliament might hesitate to increase the grant beyond £1,000,000, or £1,200,000, or £1,500,000 per year." Dr. Temple, however, whose opinion is extremely opposed to the continuance of the present system, stated that its tendency was, by constant
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relaxations of its conditions, to attain the enormous sum of £5,000,000; and although this opinion is founded on expectations which we think erroneous, it points to a danger of involving the country in a large extension of the present expenditure in consequence of relaxations in the conditions of the grant.
The principal financial difficulty with which the Committee of Council has had to contend since its operations have assumed a more extensive character, has been the inability to meet the case of what are sometimes called the "poor districts." It is to be observed that the term "poor," as applied to a school or to the locality which requires a school, is inaccurate. Every country place has within it property capable of meeting the educational wants of its population, and the same is the case even with the most miserable parishes in towns. But it is no less certain, that owing to many reasons, - of which the principal seems to be the indifference of non-resident proprietors, - there is a vast body of parishes scattered through the country, in which the establishment of an effective school is a matter of the utmost difficulty. It was to meet this difficulty that the Committee of Council first departed from the principle of only giving aid in proportion to subscriptions, to which they had previously held fast in all their operations, and established in 1853 the capitation grant.
The history of that grant is in itself curious, and when fully considered, it supplies the most remarkable illustration of the strong tendency which exists in the present operations of the Committee of Council to branch out into fresh expenditure in compliance with local demands. In 1853 a scheme of national education was proposed, according to which the towns were to be provided for by rates imposed by themselves, and the rural districts by grants from the general revenue of the country, the amount of which was to depend on the number of children in attendance. The first part of the scheme was rejected by Parliament, but the Committee of Council brought the other part into operation by a Minute which established the capitation grant. It was offered in the first instance only to places where the population was below 5,000, and which were not corporate towns; so that it was manifestly an attempt to make special provision for poor districts. The attempt, however, to confine it to such localities failed on account of the numerous cases of hardship which it produced. Ultimately it was found impossible to draw a line of distinction between the class of poor and that of richer places. The grant had to be extended to the whole country, and consequently it is now received by many schools which do
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not require it. Since its establishment it has grown with great rapidity. It was £5,957 in 1854, £20,079 in 1856, and £61,183 in 1859. In the meantime repeated attempts have been made, both by appeals to the office and in Parliament, to get it largely increased, even to the amount of double its present sum.
On the supposition that the present system were to be continued without any attempt to provide by some fresh arrangement for the wants of the poorer districts, and were to advance at its present rate, there is no doubt that the capitation grant might be largely and in some respects wastefully increased unless Parliament interfered. Experience has already shown in how many ways this might occur. Great complaints are made of the hardship of the rule which requires 176 days of attendance as the condition of a child's earning the capitation grant; and it has been often proposed to make the grant depend on the average attendance at the school. Similar suggestions, all pointing in the same direction, of increased aid to meet the wants of poorer schools, are still constantly pressed upon the office. Thus it has been urged to give larger sums to schools on the mere report of the Inspectors; and a single Minute, giving increased aid "to exceptional cases," once passed, it would soon be found (as has happened already in the history of the grant) that other cases presented equal difficulties, and the rule would be made universal. On the supposition that 2,000,000 children ^night ultimately enter schools connected with the Privy Council, as we have calculated, and that it is allowed to extend its present system through the country, some relaxation of the conditions of the capitation grant would probably have been the only means of enabling so large a body of schools to share in its benefits. Indeed, the more its area were extended, the more loudly would the excluded schools cry out for such further aid as should enable them to bring themselves within its operations. And it is by no means impossible the capitation grant might grow to £300,000, and even to a greater sum.
2. DIFFICULTY OF ADMITTING POORER SCHOOLS
It has always been considered one of the chief failures of the present system that it does not touch the districts which most require assistance. A great deal of our evidence shows that there are still, to use the words of Lord Lyttelton, "immense tracts of country in which the Government system is almost
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entirely unknown and unfelt,"* and that the schools in such districts are practically unable to meet the conditions of the Committee of Council. It is important indeed to avoid the inference often drawn that these are always found in small parishes. In many cases they probably are so, but their inability often arises as much from the apathy of a rich, as from the scanty subscriptions of a poor parish. Mr. Fraser has probably placed the matter in its true light. "I hardly know," he says, "what is meant by a rich parish or a poor parish, as in every parish (as one sees from the overseers book) there is a certain amount of annual income going into somebody's pocket, which on all principles of responsibility stands bound, as with a first charge, by certain duties to the place from which it is derived. The fact that makes all the difference in the educational, and almost in every other, condition of a parish, is the residence of the owners of the land; or, at least, this combined with the energy and zeal of the parochial clergyman. Where the proprietor does not live, there, to a very great extent, he does not spend; and many an owner of property, who is quoted as a benefactor to his kind in the neighbourhood in which he resides, is shabby and niggardly to an extent that is inconceivable towards a parish whose only claim upon him is that he carries off its great tithes or owns half or all its land. The 'poor parish,' in far the majority of cases, is that which is out of sight, and therefore out of mind. The school is a picturesque feature on the outskirts of the park; it is an expected feature - one which visitors will like to see, and will be sure to ask after - in the village adjacent to the hall; and there of course it stands, is tolerably cared for, and duly admired. But rare indeed are the instances of landowners who, wherever they have property, seem to feel it a first duty to do something for the social and moral elevation of the people."† But even while denying that the inability of parishes to meet the demands of the Council office is attributable to their small size, Mr. Fraser brings out very strongly the fact that in numerous cases a real difficulty is experienced, and even presses upon us a plan for subsidizing all small parishes, where the population is less than 400, by gifts of £10 or £15 a year from the Treasury.
It cannot indeed be doubted that the small parishes are in most respects in a less advantageous position with regard to education than the large ones. It is certain they have, in point of fact,
*Answers, p. 282.
†Report, p. 69.
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far less availed themselves of the Government assistance; and the proof of this is that the average numbers in uninspected schools are 34, those in inspected are 75. If we wanted further evidence it would be found in the condition of schools, as they have been recently described, in different parts of the country. In the diocese of Oxford, out of 339 parishes, with a population below 600, and containing a total population of 125,000, only 24 schools, two years since, were in receipt of Government aid; in Herefordshire, out of 130 parishes, with a similar population, only five received such aid; in Somerset, out of 280 such parishes, only one; in Devon, out of 245, only two: in Dorset, out of 179, ten; in Cornwall, out of 71, one; and in the archdeaconry of Coventry, Birmingham excepted, out of 76, seven.* And these facts become still more significant if we bear in mind the large proportion of schools in parishes, whose population exceeds 600, which have connected themselves with the Committee of Council. "If we look," says Mr. N. Stephenson, "at the average of all parishes over 600 that are under inspection, we shall find it to be one in 2.97; and if we look at the average of all parishes under 600, we shall find it only to reach one in 26.44." The complete account given by Mr. Warburton of the schools in Wiltshire represents a less gloomy view of the case of small schools, and one which may perhaps be taken as a fairer estimate of their state in the country generally; but out of a total of 159 schools in that county, in populations below 500, it appears that only 9 are in receipt of annual grants from the Privy Council. In stating these facts, indeed, we must remember to take into account that a number of these parishes, probably amounting to 15 per cent, possess each a population of less than 100, and therefore could scarcely support any school beyond a dame's school. Nor must we forget that a recent Minute of the Committee of Council (August 1858) offers increased facilities to parishes of this description for employing masters of a higher class; but it may be safely stated that it is extremely difficult to maintain a good school under a master, in a population below 500, without a very undue proportion of the expense being thrown upon the clergyman. Indeed, most of the evidence which we have received agrees with that of Dr. Temple,
*These statistics are given in the evidence of the Rev. Nash Stephenson, and are based upon the reports of the inspectors in the years 1857, 1858, 1859. We have already expressed our dissent from Mr. Stephenson's conclusions; but we have reason to believe that the facts he mentions (with the deductions here made) represent the state of the case with sufficient accuracy. More of the poorer schools may probably have connected themselves with the Committee of Council since that time; but it is improbable that any large number has done so.
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who has urged as a conclusive reason for some alteration in the present system, that "the poor districts can be only touched at an enormous expense." "It is impossible," he says, "to extend the present system to many districts without relaxing the conditions; and if you relax the conditions for one district it is practically impossible to prevent them from being relaxed for another."
These dangers of expense, and the difficulty of admitting the poorer schools, are cogent reasons for some modification of the present system. And they are so upon every view of the case. In the first place, if these schools are really unable to profit by the aid at present offered by the Committee of Council, there will be the strongest inducement, upon grounds of justice, to relax the present conditions. And until the system can be extended to the whole country, the case of the excluded parishes will be doubly hard, since they contribute as taxpayers to the fund in which they do not share. The most moderate attempt to offer additional relief would amount to an increase of £200,000 a year upon the present grant; and experience has shown that this aid would soon be made universal, and that it is impossible to draw a clear distinction between the wants of one parish and those of another. Thus the capacities of expenditure latent in the capitation grant would rapidly develop into an immense burden thrown on the general revenue. Or, again; suppose it to be urged that the capitation grant should be withdrawn, as an anomaly in the present system, - such a step we could not recommend by itself, for although the loss would be comparatively unimportant to the more flourishing schools, the withdrawal of a material aid which they have enjoyed for many years would be a hardship to the smaller schools, many of which it has been the means of saving from bankruptcy. There is a fallacy, moreover, in saying that the present system helps those who help themselves; the poor cannot help themselves in districts where the rich will not help them. Or, lastly, If it be urged that things should be left exactly as they are, and that the present present system, in spite of all disadvantages, will work its way through the country, then we should contend, first that its progress would be exceedingly slow, and, secondly, that while highly successful if regarded as provisional and as a stimulus to education, it would be unwise and unjust if established permanently as a national system. And this, for two reasons, both because it is at present mainly supported by excessive individual sacrifices on the part of the clergy, on which it would be impossible to rely as a permanent
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basis for a national system, and also because it would gradually tend to throw £2,000,000 a year on the central revenue for the support of an institution, the benefits of which are mainly local, and which ought, in part, to be locally administered.
The only way, therefore, in which we think this difficulty can be entirely met is by localizing some portion of the expenditure; and we are prepared to suggest a plan by which at a very small outlay parishes now unaided would obtain adequate assistance. Such a plan would obviate the inexpediency of throwing so large a sum on the central revenue. The benefits of education are to a certain degree local benefits. There can be no doubt whatever that education diminishes pauperism, and that.it tends to improve a population in every point of material well-being. These are advantages which directly touch the proprietors of the neighbourhood, and towards the extension of which they should be willing to contribute. If upon the whole this duty is neglected, (and our evidence proves that it is fulfilled very unequally,) it is the business of the State to provide that one place shall not by neglecting to bear its own burdens increase those of others.
Nor is this all. If education is to be paid for locally, those who pay for it should have a due share in the control of it. At present our evidence goes to prove that it would diffuse both a greater interest and a healthier tone in education, if other persons besides the clergy took an active part in it.
3. DEFECTIVE TEACHING
The third considerable defect in the system of the Privy Council, and one which would be felt more strongly if it were extended to most of the smaller schools in the country, is the imperfect teaching of elementary subjects. We have endeavoured to show that no plan of examination, available by the Committee of Council, has any direct tendency to counteract this danger; that inspection looks rather to the general character of the school than to the particular attainments of the younger children, and that to enable it to examine these, in the true sense of the word, would demand a large increase in the number, and consequently in the expense of the Inspectors; and, finally, that hitherto the teaching of training schools has mainly adapted the young schoolmaster to advance his higher rather than thoroughly to ground his junior pupils. We believe that to raise the general character of the children, both morally and intellectually, is, and must always be the highest aim of education; and we are far from desiring to supersede this by any plan of a mere examination into the
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more mechanical work of elementary education, the reading, writing, and arithmetic, of boys below ten years of age. But we think that the importance of this training, which must be the foundation of all other teaching, has been lost sight of; and that there is justice in the common complaint that while a fourth of the scholars are really taught, three-fourths after leaving school forget everything they have learnt there; and we are desirous to suggest inducements by which the schoolmaster, while still chiefly interested in completing his work with his elder scholars, shall find it worth his while to give that sound foundation to the younger boys, which shall enable them, if so minded, afterwards to complete their education for themselves.
4. COMPLICATION OF BUSINESS IN THE OFFICE
The only remaining question with regard to the possibility of extending the present system, is whether, if it were to include the whole country, it could be managed by the central office. Upon this point we must direct particular attention to the opinions expressed by Mr. Lingen, who, as Secretary to the Committee of Council, has been for the last ten years intimately conversant with the work of the office. Mr. Lingen's opinion is that responsibility for minute details which the present system imposes upon its administrators would make it a matter of extreme difficulty, without such alterations as he suggests, to bring all the schools of the country under its supervision. Mr. Lingen's words are the following: "Vice-presidents who have been in the Committee of Council, and have seen other departments on a large scale, would state that the complication of the system is far greater than they have seen anywhere else," and he adds "I think that if you were to follow out the present system, with its local and denominational subdivision, and with its detailed appropriations, it would break down at its centre, unless you provided a much greater establishment than either Parliament or the country would be willing, in the long run, to agree to." It might appear that, as in those public departments which deal with the application of broad principles of administration, little more would be required for the management of an increasing amount of detail than an increase in the number of subordinate officers. But upon this point Mr. Lingen's explanation is full, and, when examined, appears to be convincing. In substance it amounts to this: That the Education Office, as at present constituted, differs from every other department
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of Government in three leading points; first, in the minute details which the plan of appropriating grants to special objects necessitates; secondly, in the care and consideration required for conducting business between an office, and six or seven thousand independent bodies of school managers; and, thirdly, in the danger of delegating this work to subordinates, and the necessity that the greater part of it should pass under the eyes of the Secretary himself. And when we consider how much these points involve, - the amount of vigilance required by a central authority in controlling a grant locally administered; the constant demands for additional aid upon special grounds, which have each to be separately considered; the liability to mismanagement and fraud in appropriating the grants, and the care required for their transmission; the disputes which must often arise between managers, inspectors, and the Committee of Council, with regard to the payment or the withdrawal of grants; and further, that these intricacies of arrangement, which have proved so great already, would be quadrupled if the work of the office embraced the whole of England, we do not think that Mr. Lingen's opinion as to the difficulty of making the present system do the work of the whole country is overrated.
We will proceed, however, to give the evidence more fully. In the first place, we inquired into the nature of the complicated work of the office.
551. (Chairman.) In the course of a somewhat long examination you have been good enough to give us a history of the origin of the system, and also of its present working; are you enabled to state whether your experience leads you to suppose that it would be possible to extend the system much further? - I should say not, without considerable changes in it.
552. What are the difficulties in the way of the extension of the system, and what are the changes which you would consider necessary in order to increase the facilities for the extension of the system? - At present the object of these grants has been to appropriate them - not to pay large sums of money in gross to the managers, but as far as possible to allot to certain specific purposes whatever money is to go to the schools. Generally speaking, the person is designated who is to receive the money, so that when it arrives at the school there are at least two persons who have an interest in looking to its appropriation; that applies to the grants for pupil-teachers, and to the grants for the augmentation of salaries. The machinery which is necessary to insure that appropriation is of course an extremely complicated one. If you may have a school in any of the 52 counties of England and Wales, and if it may belong to either of four different denominations, and if the money which you send down to it may be for four or five different objects each of which has its own conditions and is subject to its own questions, a system of that sort is of course one of enormous complication. Vice-Presidents who have been in the Committee of Council,
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and who have seen other departments on a large scale, would state to you that the internal complication of the system is far greater than they have seen anywhere else. I think that if you were to follow out the present system with its local and denominational subdivision, and with its detailed appropriations, it would break down at its centre, unless you provided a much greater establishment than I think either Parliament or the country would be willing in the long run to agree to. The only way in which you could extend the system would be by simplifying the payments; and simplification really means either not appropriating the money or not following out the appropriation so strictly as you do now. For those reasons I think that the present system (meaning by the present system, the system as it now exists), is not capable of extension to the whole country.
559. (Mr. Senior.) It is a question of additional clerks, is it not? - It is a question of something more than clerks.
560. (Chairman.) I presume that in any extension which you would consider desirable, you would think it absolutely necessary that the system should be conducted under the same head? - I think that there must be one head certainly; but the extension of the system would afterwards extremely depend upon this, whether you could for a continuance rely upon its being conducted in nine-tenths of its work by separate officers, who would so far agree among each other as to observe uniformity of action, without being obliged to refer to the single head so often as to stop the machinery. That, of course, is a difficulty which, as the system extends, very much increases. I do not think that it is an insuperable difficulty, but I think that it is an extreme one.
In the second place we examined Mr. Lingen with regard to the particular causes which demand so minute a supervision from the Secretary, and render it impossible that he should delegate his work to any great extent to subordinate officers.
562. But is it practicable to subdivide the business into various departments, each department being of course subordinate to the head, but having no inter-communication the one with the other? - I should say not, for this reason, and we have had some amount of experience on the point. The Committee of Council during the first seven years of its existence made grants for one object only, namely, building. In 1846 it made grants for maintaining schools. Naturally the office at first fell into two divisions, namely, building schools and maintaining schools; but in a very short time the schools which had been built came to be maintained, and quite recently we found it necessary to combine, in a great degree, the working of those two departments. The same thing applies to the augmentation grants, and to the grants for pupil-teachers; those are separate grants for specific objects, but the certificated master to whom we pay the augmentation grant has a pupil -teacher under him, and the same school is receiving a capitation grant. It acts in the same way with the training colleges; the Queen's scholars who enter the training colleges come from schools in which they have been pupil-teachers; they pass through their examination as students into schools, in which they are masters. The grants are separate in their appropriation, but the sum total of several such separate grants goes to single schools. The managers of those single schools could not correspond with four or five independent departments.
563. Am I not to infer from the answer which you have just given, that it is impossible so to reconstruct the department as to give
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the same facilities to its head for general supervision which are given in the other departments of administration in the country? Take, for instance, the Colonial Office; the Colonial Secretary supervises the whole of the colonies of Great Britain; but under him he not only has two Under Secretaries of State and an assistant under secretary, but he has five heads of departments permanently remaining, of course, in the office, among whom are divided the whole of the colonies of the empire, such as the West Indian district, the Mediterranean district, and so forth. Each is answerable to the head for the details of business connected with each division, but has no connexion with the business of the other department. I think I am to understand that in the case of the Committee of Privy Council such a distribution of work would be impracticable. If so, would not the amount of labour be increased by any considerable extension of the system to such a degree that the machinery would break down from the impossibility of supervision; that is to say, that the President, as well as permanent officers immediately responsible to him, must forego that supervision which is absolutely required, and that thereby the greatest abuses, and possibly even frauds, might be introduced into the system without the possibility of detection? - I think that the only public department with which the Education Department, if greatly extended, in order to administer the present system, could be compared, would be the great Revenue Departments, or the Post Office. The distribution of nine-tenths of the education grant is essentially a question of detail; small payments are issued to small institutions, as to which, if you have an honest report, an honest verification, and accurate accounts, pretty nearly all that you can require is effected. But you have also connected with these details a great variety of questions on which people's feelings and animosities are very easily excited, and you require in this work, which looks so petty, a great deal of administrative discretion. An intemperate letter written to the manager of some little out-of-the-way school may produce a commotion in a diocese. Any act of partiality as between one set of promoters and another might produce very serious consequences. You have a certain amount of really responsible action entangled in a vast mass of complicated minute detail, and I think the question is just this, that if seven examiners and two assistant secretaries, and one secretary, are able to manage a certain amount of supervision, fourteen examiners, and four assistant secretaries will not be able to do twice as much as easily and as accurately. If the whole thing had to be organized de novo, a great deal might be done, undoubtedly, in having better buildings than we have got. At present we occupy the rooms from the cellars up to the garrets, and a great deal of distraction is occasioned by having our work scattered in so many different places. I do not think that the extension of the system is an administrative impossibility; but I think that it is a matter of extreme difficulty, and I think that it would have to be upon a scale which, as I said before, would alarm Parliament.
These are difficulties, which may not perhaps be appreciated by persons who are not practically conversant with the manner in which grants to schools are appropriated on the present system. But those who know the care which is required for the superintendence of the present system, and the numerous minute payments which it involves, are aware that they are not exaggerated.
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In addition to a long correspondence on the establishment of a school about building grants, the Committee have constant occasion to correspond with the managers of schools about three different grants - for the augmentation of the master's salary, for pupil-teachers, and for books and apparatus. Thus, to take the case of pupil-teachers alone, the Committee paid in the year 1859 to and on account of 15,224 pupil-teachers, £252,550 12s 11d. This must have involved more than 20,000 separate payments; for each pupil-teacher, and every principal teacher who was paid a gratuity for teaching him, received one, and each payment was made by a separate post-office order, in favour of the person interested. It has been already shown that this practice involves great delay in the payments, it is felt by the pupil-teachers and their friends as a grievance; and upon any misunderstanding arising in the matter the Committee of Council is frequently involved in a correspondence with the managers of the school about three different persons, the pupil-teacher, his friends, and the master. In addition to all this, another correspondence often arises, in case the pupil-teacher fails at any of his examinations.
There surely can be little doubt that any plan which should relieve the Committee of Council of some of this mass of minutiæ, and should enable them to look to the principles of education instead of scrutinising its smallest details, must improve their whole power of dealing with the subject. This is the view adopted by Mr. Chester, whose opinion, like that of Mr. Lingen, derives weight from the fact that he was during fifteen years Assistant Secretary to the Committee. And Dr. Temple, who was also intimately acquainted with the office both in the time of Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth and of Mr. Lingen, tells us that "the complication of the office is enormous in consequence of the present system." Mr. Chester's words are:
A great evil in the amount of work has been, I think, that the office has been so absorbed by the day's work, that there has been very little time to consider what improvements might be made in the system; and of late years there has been no attempt whatever to combine different religious bodies, or to supply what was defective in the system as a general system, and to lay the foundation for something really like a national system of education. It is impossible for a person worked as the Secretary, Mr. Lingen, is, to have time at his disposal to enable him to consider those questions properly, and the Vice-President and the President hold office for a very short time, and probably one set of those officers may take views somewhat different from the previous set, and minutes get reconsidered and altered.
We have thus the opinions of three persons who probably are as conversant with the recent labour of the Committee of Council,
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as any who could be found; and they substantially agree in their judgment, all of them, as to the nature of the evil, and two of them as to the character of the remedy required. It is true that Sir James K. Shuttle worth has expressed a different opinion from that of his successor as to the capacity of the office, if arrangements were made for dealing with its increase or business; but he has himself suggested various simplifications as absolutely necessary, and he states that if the inspection were greatly extended, he "cannot conceive that the present staff, without the aid of a permanent Vice-President of the Committee of Council, and an Inspector-General of Schools, would be equal to all the duties imposed upon it." But it is important to notice that Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth left the office in 1848; and that his experience, to which we attach great value, refers to a time when the grant did not amount to one-sixth of what it has since become. We will only further quote the report of the Committee of Inquiry into Public Offices, which speaks of the business of the office in a way tending strongly to confirm the opinion now expressed by Mr. Lingen. The report was published in 1854, and since that time the work of the office has increased more than sixfold.
There is no department of the Government into which more elaborate mechanism is introduced than the Office for Education. Grants in aid of schools are made to all applicants on their compliance with certain conditions. As the number of applications can never be known beforehand, the amount to be taken in the annual vote can only be estimated according to the experience of past years; and when the money has been voted, as the award of grants has to be made by anticipation, and payment follows at varying intervals (sometimes as much as two years), according to the nature of the conditions to be fulfilled, a strict watch must be kept over the expenditure, in order to secure the department against the risk of incurring liabilities beyond its means. It is also necessary to distinguish the purposes for which each several grant is made, so as to render it as useful as possible; for it would be undesirable to place a sum of money in the hands of the promoters of a school, merely as a grant in aid of their contributions, without ascertaining the particular uses to which it is to be applied. Further, it is essential to the system upon which the State acts with reference to education, that the grants made in each case should depend upon the exertions of those who receive it; and that the department charged with its administration should satisfy itself by means of well-regulated inspection, that it is applied to the best advantage. Such inspection has to be conducted by gentlemen appointed with reference to the requirements of different religious denominations; yet the whole must be directed upon harmonious principles, A central department can only carry on the direction of so complicated a system by the aid of very perfect machinery; and when it is borne in mind that the amount of the grant to be administered is no less than £260,000; that there are 25 inspectors' districts; 5,509 schools subject to inspection, of which 2,466 must be inspected every year, and the others as frequently as can be arranged; 2,875 certificated masters and mistresses, of whom 2,200 are receiving annual
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additions to their salaries; and 6,180 pupil-teachers in the receipt of salaries from the Government, and consequently subject to annual examinations; that from 800 to 900 sets of books and maps are annually distributed; and that aid is given towards the building of nearly 300 schools a year; it will readily be perceived that great care and constant attention are necessary to prevent confusion, and to carry on the business in a proper manner.
SUMMARY
Our review of the existing system has led us to the following conclusions: We have seen that its leading principles have been to proportion public aid to private subscriptions, and to raise the standard of education by improving the general character of the schools throughout the country; that it has enlisted, in the promotion of education, a large amount of religious activity, and that, avoiding all unnecessary interference with opinion, It has practically left the management of the schools in the hands of the different religious denominations. In these respects It has been most successful. But we find that it demands, as a condition of aid, an amount of voluntary subscriptions which many schools placed under disadvantageous circumstances can scarcely be expected to raise; that It enlists in many places too little of local support and interest; that its teaching is deficient in the more elementary branches, and in Its bearing on the younger pupils; and that while the necessity of referring many arrangements In every school to the central office embarrasses the Committee of Council with a mass of detail, the difficulty of investigating minute and distant claims threatens to become an element at once of expense and of dispute. We find further that Lord John Russell, one of its leading supporters, asserted in Parliament that "it was not intended by those who in 1839 commenced the system that its plan should be such as to pervade the whole country;" we see that It has been found necessary to break in upon its original principle of proportioning aid to subscription, and that this leads to a vast Increase of expense, and we therefore conclude that if the system Is to become national prompt means should be taken to remedy defects which threaten to injure Its success In proportion to Its extension, and to involve the revenue In an excessive expenditure. We now, therefore, proceed, in accordance with Your Majesty's Instructions, to suggest the further measures which, in our opinion, "are required '' for the extension of sound and cheap elementary instruction to all classes of the people." We shall propose means by which, in the first place, the present system may be made applicable to
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the poorer no less than the richer districts throughout the whole country; secondly, by which the present expenditure may be controlled and regulated; thirdly, by which the complication of business in the office may be checked; fourthly, by which greater local activity and interest in education may be encouraged; fifthly, by which the general attainment of a greater degree of elementary knowledge may be secured than is acquired at present.
SECTION III
GENERAL PLAN FOR MODIFYING AND EXTENDING THE PRESENT SYSTEM
Before we proceed to explain the principles upon which we shall recommend extensive alterations and additions to the present system, it may be desirable to state in detail the leading features of the plan which we propose.
I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES
1. All assistance given to the annual maintenance of schools shall be simplified and reduced to grants of two kinds.
2. The first of these grants shall be paid out of the general taxation of the country, in consideration of the fulfilment of certain conditions by the managers of the schools. Compliance with these conditions is to be ascertained by the Inspectors.
The second shall be paid out of the county rates, in consideration of the attainment of a certain degree of knowledge by the children in the school during the year preceding the payment. The existence of this degree of knowledge shall be ascertained by examiners appointed by the County Board of Education hereinafter mentioned.
3. No school shall be entitled to these grants which shall not fulfil the following general conditions.
The school shall have been registered at the office of the Privy Council, on the report of the Inspector, as an elementary school for the education of the poor.
The school shall be certified by the inspector to be healthy, properly drained and ventilated, and supplied with offices; the principal school-room shall contain at least eight square feet of superficial area for each child in average attendance.
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II. DISTRIBUTION OF THE GRANT FROM THE STATE FUND
4. There shall be paid upon the average attendance of the children daring the year preceding the Inspector's visit the sums following, for each child, according to the opinion formed by the Inspectors of the discipline, efficiency, and general character of the school.
| Containing less than 60 Children | Containing more than 60 Children |
| In Schools in which a Certificated Teacher has been actually employed for 9 calendar months in the preceding year. | Not less than 5s 6d nor more than 6s. | Not less than 4s 6d nor more than 5s. |
There shall also be paid an additional grant of 2s 6d a child on so many of the average number of children in attendance throughout the year as have been under the instruction of pupil-teachers qualified according to Rule 6, or assistant teachers, allowing 30 children for each pupil-teacher, or 60 for each assistant teacher.
5. Registers of the attendance of children, and of such other Register. particulars as shall be contained in a form to be authorized by the Committee of Council for Education, shall be kept in every school claiming the grant, and the managers shall certify that the list of scholars on account of whom the grant is claimed is correctly extracted from the register, and it shall be verified by the inspector.
6. Qualified pupil-teachers are those who are apprenticed to the principal teacher of the school for from three to five years, have passed the pupil-teachers' examination herein-after described, and have satisfied the inspector as to their behaviour, their power of teaching, and their power of reading aloud. No child shall be apprenticed as a pupil-teacher under 13 years of age.
7. General examinations of pupil-teachers shall be held half-yearly. The subjects shall be selected and the papers furnished by the Committee of Council.
III. GRANT FROM THE COUNTY RATE
8. Every school which applies for aid out of the county rate shall be examined by a county examiner within 12 months after the application.
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Any one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools under whose inspection the school will fall shall be entitled to be present at the examination.
The examiner shall examine every child presented to him for examination individually in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and shall make proper entries in the schedule.
After the examination the examiner shall make two copies of the schedule, of which he shall forward one to the county treasury, and leave the other with the principal teacher, or with a manager of the school.
The managers of all schools fulfilling the conditions specified in Rule 3. shall be entitled to be paid out of the county rate a sum varying from 22s 6d to 21s for every child who has attended the school during 140 days in the year preceding the day of examination, and who passes an examination before the county examiner in reading, writing, arithmetic, and who, if a girl, also passes an examination in plain work, according to the schedule appended hereto, and marked A.
Scholars under 7 years of age need not be examined, but the amount of the grant shall be determined by the average number of children in daily attendance, 20s being paid on account of each child.
The two grants together are never to exceed the fees and subscriptions, or 15s per child on the average attendance.
We have entered into these calculations because we thought it our duty to form as exact an estimate as we could of the ultimate expense of the measures which we recommend; but we cannot pretend to specify all the details of administration which will almost inevitably modify, in some degree, the estimate we have formed.
IV. COUNTY AND BOROUGH BOARD OF EDUCATION
9. In every county or division of a county having a separate county rate there shall be a County Board of Education appointed in the following manner: The Court of Quarter Sessions shall elect any number of members not exceeding six, being in the Commission of the Peace, or being chairmen or vice-chairmen of boards of guardians; and the members so elected shall elect any other persons not exceeding six. The number of ministers of religion on any County Board of Education shall not exceed one-third of the whole number.
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10. In corporate towns which at the census last preceding contained more than 40,000 inhabitants, the town council may appoint a Borough Board of Education, to consist of any number of persons not exceeding six, of which not more than two shall be ministers of religion. This Board shall within the limits of the borough have the powers of a County Board of Education.
11. Where there is a Borough Board of Education the grant which would have been paid out of the county rate shall be paid out of the borough rate or other municipal funds.
12. The election of County and Borough Boards of Education shall be for three years, but at the end of each year one-third of the Board shall retire, but be capable of re-election. At the end of the first and second years the members to retire shall be determined by lot. The Court of Quarter Sessions, at the next succeeding quarter sessions after the vacancies made in the County Board shall fill up the places, but so as always to preserve as near as may be the proportion between the number chosen from the Commission of the Peace and from the chairmen and vice-chairmen of the Board of Guardians and the other members. The vacancies in the Borough Boards of Education shall be filled up by the Town Council at a meeting to be held within one calendar month from the day of the vacancies made.
13. An Inspector of schools, to be appointed by the Committee of Council, shall be a member of each County or Borough Board.
14. The Boards of Education shall appoint examiners, being certificated masters of at least seven years standing, and receive communications and decide upon complaints as to their proceedings.
PAYMENT
15. Grants shall be paid in the following manner:
The Inspector shall report to the Committee of Council the amounts payable to schools in his district out of the central grant.
The Committee of Council shall send to the county and borough treasurers a statement of the schools, and of the amounts payable to them in their county or borough, and shall transmit to them the total amount payable out of the grant to all the schools in their county or borough.
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The managers of every school intending to claim grants from the county rate shall, in the month of January in each year, forward to the clerk of the peace or town clerk a claim, stating the maximum number of scholars on whom grants will be claimed, and the name and address of some banker to whom the amount ultimately found due to them may be paid; and the payment made out of the county rate shall not exceed the maximum payable on the number of scholars mentioned in the claim.
The county or borough treasurer shall pay into the bank so named the total amount to which the school is entitled from both funds.
The school managers shall be able to draw upon these amounts by drafts, signed by two managers or trustees, made payable to the order of the payee, and stating on the face of it the purpose for which the money is paid.
The bankers shall forward the cancelled drafts to the county treasurer, who shall cause a classified summary of them to be published.
A
REPORT OF THE EXAMINATION OF A SCHOOL FOR THE COUNTY GRANT
Declaration by teacher as to correctness of list.
Declaration by examiner as to personal examination of every child named.
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TESTS IN READING, WRITING, ARITHMETIC, AND PLAIN WORK TO BE DRAWN UP BY THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL
For Children from 7 to 9
Reading, &c.
Writing, &c.
Arithmetic, &c.
Same for elder Children
SCALE of ALLOWANCES to be settled by COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL
Similar Table for girls, with additional column for plain work.
SECTION IV
CONSIDERATIONS IN FAVOUR OF PROPOSED PLAN
We now proceed to consider the plan, of which we have given an account in the preceding pages. It will best be treated under the two heads of - I. Simplification and limitation of the present grants of the Committee of Council. II. Objects to be attained by an additional grant from the county rates.
I. SIMPLIFICATION AND LIMITATION OF THE PRESENT GRANTS OF THE COMMITTEE OF COUNCIL
Our proposals under this head may be summed up in the recommendation that a grant, on the average attendance of the children, shall be paid by the Committee of Council to the managers of every school in which a certificated teacher is employed, and that a further grant shall be paid to every school which is properly supplied with pupil-teachers, provided that the schools in both cases are certified by the inspectors to be in proper condition.
In this manner we hope to maintain that principle of the Committee of Council, of which we have always recognized the importance, which has aimed at keeping up the standard of
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education, by making the employment of trained masters and pupil-teachers essential to the reception of their grants. We regard this as the proper province of the Committee of Council. They have the control of the training colleges; they regulate the instruction of the pupil-teachers; and their representatives, the inspectors, are peculiarly fitted by their position and experience to appreciate the differences which, independently of positive acquirements, distinguish a good school from a bad one. We propose that the sums to be thus paid for trained masters and pupil-teachers may be increased or diminished within certain limits to be determined by the Committee of Council, according to the inspector's opinion of the condition of the school. This is a necessary provision to invest the inspector's opinion with importance; at present everything depends upon the inspector's report, and as the form in which we propose that the grant shall be given will have a tendency to diminish the importance of this report, we wish to attach a special value to it by the above means.
Our principal object in thus recommending that, subject to these stringent conditions, the grant to all schools in connexion with the Committee of Council shall be paid in one sum to the managers, rather than appropriated (as at present) to particular objects, has been to relieve the office of a great part of its connexion with the internal management of schools, and thus to simplify its business, and to relax what has been often complained of as "the rigidity" of its rules. It is, for example, an injustice attendant upon those inflexible rules which are essential to a central system, that the payment for the support of a pupil-teacher should be the same in Wales or Cornwall, where living is cheap, as it is in London, where living is dear. Local management would obviate many such defects; and important as it is to secure the employment of trained masters and pupil-teachers, these advantages can be obtained in a manner far less embarrassing to the Committee of Council, and not less simple, than at present. It is so necessary to show that our proposal would tend to relieve the office of an embarrassing complication, and not merely of an amount of details falling within its proper province, and capable of being managed by a few additional clerks, that we must again refer to Mr. Lingen's statement, that -
The only way in which you could extend the system would be by simplifying the payments; and simplification really means either not appropriating the money or not following out the appropriation so strictly as you do now. For those reasons I think that the present system (meaning by the present system, the system as it now exists,) is not capable of extension to the whole country.
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And when further questioned with regard to the manner in which these difficulties might be overcome, Mr. Lingen points to a plan similar in principle to this part of our own.
554. (Chairman.) And if it was thought desirable to continue the present system, the continuance of which I apprehend necessarily entails extension, the change which you would advocate, or at any rate would think necessary, would be to bring the whole system rather to a grant which should point at results than to a grant which should provide means? - I was at the moment thinking rather of the financial arrangement. Supposing that you came to a universal capitation grant, it might be given either as it is now, upon a general inspection of the school, which may be said to be paying for means, or it might be attempted to base it upon results in the shape of an examination of all the children. But I think it would be conceivable that you might adopt a system of capitation grants, leaving your present system of verifying the quid pro quo as it is. You might have a plan of this sort; you might have three, four, or five different classes of schools, defined by specified distinctions; and you might say that upon the inspector's report, in the case of a school falling under one or other of those classes, the capitation grant should be so much. I did not mean to say that a capitation grant necessarily implied paying for results as contrasted with paying for means, but I did mean to say that the simplification of the system would be in the direction of substituting capitation grants for the present annual grants.
The opinion of Dr. Temple is equally definite with regard to the difficulty of managing the increasing business of the office. After stating that "the complication in the office is enormous, in consequence of the central system," he proceeds as follows:
2583. (Rev. W. C. Lake.) Would you say that the pupil-teacher system illustrated the good as well as the bad effects of the working of the Privy Council system? - It illustrates one bad effect, namely, the rigidity necessarily attendant upon a central system.
2584. Will you explain your meaning when you use the word "rigidity;" is it only with respect to the payment? - I referred to the payments; but it is one instance of what attends a central system throughout all its working, - the payment of the pupil-teachers, the payment of the masters, and the arrangements of the school, would all of them in many respects be very much better left to a local authority.
2585. In all other respects then you think that the pupil-teacher system is entirely successful? - I think it is very successful.
2586. (Mr. Senior.) Might not that evil which you have mentioned be very much diminished if the Privy Council gave a smaller sum to the pupil-teachers, and required that sum to be augmented by the local authorities?I think it would be a great improvement to throw the burden of the payment of the pupil-teachers upon the local authorities.
2587. Altogether or partially? - If the present system must continue, which I should think a great evil, I think that it would be improved by turning all the grants into a capitation grant, and leaving the local managers to make all their bargains, both with masters and with pupil-teachers.
2588. (Rev. W. C. Lake.) Would you take no security in that case from the local managers that they had pupil-teachers at all? - I would
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only give the capitation grant on condition that the school was supplied with such and such definite things, namely, a certificated master, so many pupil-teachers in proportion to the boys capable of passing the examinations, such and such a state of school, such and such a supply of books, and so on.
2589. You would think it a very bad plan, supposing if the school was in a state of efficiency, the Government were to grant the money for it to do what it liked with it? - Yes, I should think it a very great evil. I am quite sure that the end of that would be that a good deal of the money would be simply thrown away.
Lastly, Dr. Temple fully states his own recommendation, as follows:
The best mode of simplifying the work of the central office, would be to change all the annual grants at present made from thence into a graduated capitation grant. Thus, to a school reported by Her Majesty's inspector to be of a proper size for the number attending it, well ventilated and in thorough repair, fully supplied with needful furniture, books and apparatus, and efficiently taught by a registered master, the capitation grant should be at the lowest rate; if the master were certificated, at a higher rate; and if besides all this there were a full staff of pupil-teachers able to pass the examinations, or a full staff of assistant masters, at the highest rate. The local authorities might then be left to make their own bargains with both masters and pupil-teachers. The inspectors could refer to the central office those examination papers, and those only, about which they felt any doubt; all refusals of the grant would come from the central office, but the central office would only have to deal with the special cases, and wherever the inspector felt quite certain that the grant ought to be made he would report favourably under each head, and the central office would act on his report. I have no doubt that this would simplify the central work extremely.
The mode of payment which we recommend would obviate the inconveniences, and attain the objects here mentioned. Under the present system, as the Committee of Council has no local organization to assist it, the precaution adopted in paying both pupil-teachers and masters, though cumbrous and inconvenient in the extreme, is perhaps indispensable. Upon the plan which we propose the payments would be extremely simple. The Committee of Council would pay all the annual grants due for all the schools in a county or borough to the county or borough treasurer. The treasurer would pay them to the account of the separate managers at the banks which they might select, and the managers would obtain the amounts which they required by drafts payable to the order of the payee, and expressing on their face the purpose for which the money was required. Thus, "Pay to A.B., or order, £15, being the amount of his wages as a pupil-teacher in ____ school, from ____ to ____." The bank would not cash the draft unless it purported to be for a purpose connected with the school, nor without the endorsement of the payee. Thus the
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money could not be misapplied without forgery or conspiracy, and the cancelled drafts would at once form vouchers for the proper expenditure of the money, and enable the county treasurer to account for the expenditure of all the public money received by schools in his county. Tabular or even detailed statements might be published in the local parsers, and would furnish an effectual guarantee against misappropriation, and useful statistical information as to the expenses of schools.
The objects which we hope to secure by the form in which we recommend that henceforth all grants from the Council Office shall be given to schools are - first, to maintain, as at present, the quality of education by encouraging schools to employ superior teachers; secondly, to simplify the business of the office in its correspondence and general connexion with schools in receipt of the grant; thirdly, to diminish the rigour and apparent injustice of some of its rules. These alterations might stand alone, and if we added to them a proposal to limit the grants of the Council Office to the average sum now given, they would probably have the effect of allowing the present system to extend itself slowly, and to embrace, in the course of time, a large number of schools now unconnected with it. They would be an improvement of the system on its present basis; but they would not in our opinion supply the requisite means by which the basis itself would be widened; in other words, by which the public aid would be extended to a large body of the poorer schools, both in town and country, which do not seem likely within any assignable period to be in a position to meet the requirements of the Council. Nor would they have any direct tendency to remedy those defects in the present teaching of schools of which we have spoken. The means for attaining these further objects, it will be the aim of the second part of our plan to suggest.
II. OBJECTS TO BE ATTAINED BY AN ADDITIONAL GRANT FROM THE COUNTY RATE
The second part of our scheme is that a grant shall be paid out of the county rate, in respect of every child who passes an examination in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and who has attended any one school whatever for 140 days in the preceding year. This grant would be independent of any conditions whatever, except that the school was open to inspection and was reported healthy. We propose that the examination
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shall be conducted not by inspectors, but by examiners; and that these shall be appointed by a county board, in the manner above described, whose business it shall be to make arrangements as to their districts, and to hear and decide upon any complaints which may be brought as to undue severity or laxity in the examinations. The direct effects which we anticipate from this recommendation are, first, that such a measure will enable many schools to obtain public aid which at present have no prospect of doing so; secondly, that it will excite local interest, and secure as much local management as is at present desirable; and, thirdly, that the examination will exercise a powerful influence over the efficiency of the schools, and will tend to make a minimum of attainment universal. We shall consider these points in their order.
1. Schools in the smaller and more destitute places would obtain assistance.
We have found that the principal obstacle which has prevented the Committee of Council from assisting schools in places which primâ facie would appear most to stand in need of aid, arises from the fact that any extension of assistance to meet exceptional cases is sure to pass rapidly into an universal rule, involving much waste of public money. This difficulty we believe to be one from which a central office called upon to meet local and distant demands can never escape. We have therefore been led to look for some principle on which assistance can be offered to poorer schools, whether in town or country, without violating the rule which has hitherto directed all Government grants to education, that no public assistance shall be given to schools except in proportion to their own exertions to meet it. With this view we propose to offer a premium upon every scholar, upon proof given of a definite amount of knowledge, no condition being required from the school except its being clean and healthy. Such a plan would, we believe, act directly upon most of the smaller schools in the country, not only by encouraging them to improve their teaching, but by giving them that pecuniary locus standi [right to bring a legal action], which is what they may justly require as the means for raising themselves to the higher level of the Government grant. Thus a school of 50 boys which should obtain £8 or £10 from this examination would receive both an aid and a stimulus which would induce it to make greater exertions. No other mode of assistance appears to us appropriate. We have already shown that such schools often demand, at present, an extent of support which amounts to asking that the duties which are
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neglected by the proprietors of the neighbourhood should be paid for by the rest of the community. But the answer of the Committee of Council to the Hereford memorialists in 1856, and to the Coventry memorial in 1859, proves conclusively that few places are in such a condition that they could not, with the aid we now suggest, gradually increase the resources of the schools so as to meet the requirements of the Committee of Council. And Ave believe that if our proposal was adopted it would induce the great majority of them to do so.
We are thus led to recommend this method of proportioning assistance to exertion as one which would adjust itself to the comparative wants of different schools, while it would be free from the charge of wasting the public money, which may be urged with truth against most of the plans proposed for relieving the more destitute districts. We have already given evidence to show that the claims of many such places to assistance are real: and if this is granted, we may fairly ask by what means, unless the sound principles of the present system are utterly disregarded, any assistance can be given except on such a plan as we now suggest. We have examined some of the principal methods by which it is usually proposed to attain this object. We have seen that one of the most matured plans amounts to a demand that parishes with a population below 600 shall obtain £73 if they can raise £40, while the neighbouring parish of 650 is to raise £50 and to receive in turn £23. By such suggestions (and most of the suggestions agree in demanding similar subsidies), supposing the parishes with a population below 600 to be 7,000 in number, we should add by a single measure at least £300,000 a year to the amount of the present grant. A more reasonable proposal, indeed, has been suggested by Mr. Fraser, who, fixing upon a lower level for aid, recommends that a grant should be made from the Treasury of £10 or £15 a year to all parishes with a population below 400; and he adds "that the effect which such an additional outlay properly distributed would have upon the condition of the school is incalculable." Even this point, unless the conditions were stringent, may well be doubted; but the proposal is only another instance of the difficulty of giving relief without violating the principles of justice. Thus, the number stated by Mr. Fraser makes his plan almost exclusively applicable to rural districts; and there are many parishes in the more populous and destitute part of towns where it is even more difficult to support a school. How could such parishes with a population of 5,000 be refused assistance, while all
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rural parishes with a population of 400 were invited to dip their hands in the public purse? Or, again, on what principles are we to subsidize a poor parish of 400 and exclude a rich one, which may urge "exceptional claims?" Upon the principle which we have recommended, all would profit alike in proportion as their efforts tend to increase the healthy activity of the school; and we are unable to point out any other on which justice would be equally dealt out to all.
2. Local Interest would be directed to education.
It is a defect In the existing system that it has not in effect sufficiently awakened a general local interest. Our own proposals, we believe, would effect this, and would bring the condition of schools into public notice by testing the results or their teaching without any interference with their management. These benefits we expect to accrue from the working of a County Board, and of the similar Board which we propose to establish in certain boroughs. We have shown how excessive are the details of business from which we propose to relieve the Council Office, and some portion of this, together with a general control over yearly examinations, would come into the hands of the County and the Borough Boards. This would give them a considerable place in education; and while they would have no claim to interfere with the management of schools, a moral influence of publicity would be exercised, which would be beneficial to their working. At the same time, nothing would tend more directly to bring the many neglected districts in which assistance to education is given scantily or irregularly under the legitimate influence of the public opinion of the neighbourhood. The Reports of the Inspectors can hardly be said to have any public circulation, but Boards of Education in counties and in boroughs would publish their annual report of the examinations of their schools, and would secure a more judicious attention to the condition of such schools than any other tribunal we can suggest.
The areas, and the bodies from which these Boards are to be appointed, appear to us the only ones likely to secure a class of local administrators to whom so delicate a subject as education could be safely entrusted. In arranging the constitution of the County Boards we have attempted to secure the presence of persons whose standing, experience, and local knowledge would give weight to their proceedings and ensure their Interest in their functions. We think, also, that in most counties persons will be found who, without holding any official position, have much experience of popular education and take great interest in it. We
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propose, therefore, that the other members of the County Board should have the power of associating with themselves any number of such persons not exceeding six. And we propose that in addition an Inspector selected by the Committee of Council shall have a seat upon this, and upon the Borough Board. In the smaller counties it might be difficult or inconvenient to have a Board composed of 12 members. We have, therefore, in each case, left the electors the option of appointing a smaller number of members than the full number.
3. The examination will give an impulse to the poorer schools, and secure proper teaching.
From the plan of an examination we anticipate the double advantage that while it will maintain the only sound principle upon which schools ought to obtain additional aid, it will at once stimulate and improve the character of their teaching. On the first point we have spoken fully; with regard to the latter we need only repeat our belief that the present defects of teaching and inspection aggravate one another, and that, till something like a real examination is introduced into our day schools, good elementary teaching will never be given to half the children who attend them. At present, the temptation of the teachers is to cram the elder classes, and the inspection is too cursory to check the practice, while there are no inducements to make them attend closely to the younger children. We have repeatedly recognized the value and the important functions of inspection, and entirely agree with the description of its objects given by Sir J. K. Shuttleworth; but to assert that it is a real examination, and that an inspector can examine 150 boys individually in less than two hours, is obviously absurd. On the other hand, every one who has been at a public school knows how searching and improving is the character of a careful examination, even down to the very youngest children, of eight or nine years old. We believe that such an examination would be equally efficient in our humbler schools, and would impart a practical and real character to their teaching, which even the poorest child, paying in part for its education, has a right to expect.
We have carefully considered all that may be urged against such a plan, both upon the grounds of its employing the agency of schoolmasters, a class inferior to the present inspectors, and of the probable variations in the standard which so large a body of examiners will create.
With regard to the first point, we consider it to be one of the most valuable parts of inspection that the Inspector, moving in the
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same class of society, understands the objects and the feelings of the managers of schools.* It would be a great mistake to introduce a person of inferior manners and education as an adviser or an authority into the schools. But nothing of this sort is contemplated. The inspector will still form his estimate of the condition of the school, and regulate by his report a portion of its payment. The work of the examiner will be of a limited and technical character, and will give no room for the expression of opinion as to the school, and still less for interference with its arrangements. Meanwhile we regard it as a real though subordinate advantage that this occupation would give employment to persons of the class of schoolmasters whose prospects in life are of a somewhat unvaried character, and whose position (as we have already shown) is subject to disadvantages.
The proposed examination will be in reading, writing, and arithmetic only, but we are well aware that simple as such an examination may appear, there will probably at first be considerable variation in the standard among a large body of examiners. This, however, is an evil incident to every kind of examination. Every one, for example, is aware that even in the Universities it is impossible to maintain an invariable standard, and great complaints on this subject are often made with regard to inspection; but this is one of the objections which may be brought against every plan, and which must not be allowed to outweigh counterbalancing advantages. In the present case, if we were able to enter into details, it would be easy to explain the means by which the difficulty can be met as soon as the system is in action. For example, the only part of the examination which need be conducted viva voce is the reading; the writing and arithmetic would be done upon paper, and would be occasionally looked over by the examiners conjointly, so as to establish a uniform standard, but this is not the place to enter into minute details. We have satisfied ourselves by careful inquiry that an examination of young children in elementary subjects would be attended with fair and just results; and without speaking of these subjects as the only ones of importance in schools, we believe them to be essential to their perfect success, and to be at present greatly neglected.
A charge on the county rate such as we propose will not, we trust, be liable to the objections which may be urged against a parish rate. It will not involve the embarrassments connected with the religious character of schools, which have greatly contri
*Evidence of Dr, Temple, answer 2917.
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buted to the defeat of the various schemes for the establishment of general rating systems. It will not entail the transfer of the management, of schools to the hands of a large and mixed body of ratepayers; since the limited powers which we propose to place in local hands will be placed in the hands of the most highly educated classes. Being raised on a large area, it will not, we hope, supersede parish subscriptions, as a system of parish rating would tend to do; and so far as it redistributes the burthen of maintaining the schools, as between the clergy and the owners of land, the evidence shows that it does so in the interest of justice. It may be urged that like a parish rate, it falls exclusively on rateable property; but, as education undoubtedly diminishes pauperism, it has a direct tendency to lighten the poor rate; and scarcely any impost, local or general, can be named, the incidence of which is perfectly fair.
THE INDEPENDENCE OF RELIGIOUS TEACHING, AND OF THE MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOLS
In concluding this part of our plan we must state that as we have wished, in relieving the Council Office of its complication of business, and in enabling it to extend its operations over the whole country, to preserve the leading features of the present system, - we especially adhere to the principles to which it is indebted for no small part of its success, non-interference both in the religious training which is given by different denominations of Christians, and absence of all central control over the direct management of schools. Omitting all other grounds on which we think this course desirable, our present inquiry has impressed us with the conviction that no other is practicable in the present state of religious feeling in England. Not only does it seem to us certain that the members of all religious bodies would be dissatisfied with any change in this respect, but the fact that religious education has been working with success upon this basis during the last 20 years, has given to this principle a position in the country from which any attempt to dislodge it would destroy much that has been gained, and would give a dangerous shock to our system of education.
While, however, we have deemed it a matter of the highest importance to leave the religious teaching in schools assisted from public funds to the exclusive decision and control of the managers, we feel ourselves compelled to notice a serious evil incident to this arrangement. It sometimes happens that in places too small to allow of the establishment of two schools, the only one to which the children of the poor in those places can resort, is
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placed by the managers under regulations which render imperative the teaching of the Church catechism to all the scholars, and the attendance of all at Church. In such cases it may result that persons of other denominations are precluded, unless at the sacrifice of their conscientious convictions, from availing themselves of educational advantages for their children, furnished in part by public funds to which as taxpayers they contribute. This is manifestly unjust. We observe that by the Act (23 Vict. c. 11.) passed last Session, "to amend the law relating to endowed schools," the trustees or governors of every endowed school are from time to time authorized and bound to make such orders as, whilst they shall not interfere with the religious teaching of other scholars as now fixed by statute or other legal requirement, and shall not authorize any religious teaching other than that previously afforded in the school, shall nevertheless provide for admitting to the benefit of the school, the children of parents not in communion with the church, sect, or denomination, according to the doctrines or formularies of which religious instruction is to be afforded under the endowment of the said school." If we are not prepared to recommend that the principle laid down by the Legislature for the regulation of endowed schools shall be extended to all schools aided by public funds, it is not because we regard it as indefensible on the grounds of justice. But, inasmuch as the evidence before us goes to prove that, on the whole, the practice of exclusion is not now very frequently enforced, and that it is progressively giving place to a more liberal management in this respect, we believe the evil may be safely left to the curative Influence of public opinion, and will not necessitate a compulsory enactment. Should events prove that we are mistaken, it may become the duty of the Committee of Council to consider whether the public fund placed at their disposal in aid of popular education may not be administered in such a manner as will insure to the children of the poor in all places the opportunity of partaking of its benefits without exposing their parents to a violation of their religious convictions.
SECTION V
EXPENSE OF PROPOSED PLAN
The principle on which our proposal is based is that all schools shall have a reasonable prospect of earning from public sources one-third of the total expense of educating all children as well as they are educated in the present annual grant schools; the
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best schools, however, should be able to earn a higher sum, with the limitation that this shall in no case exceed half the amount of their expenditure. The direct annual expense of education for each child varies to some extent, as we shall show, according to the numbers in the school, but its general amount is about 30s a year. A reasonable prospect ought therefore to be afforded to the average of schools of earning (as they do at present if they are in receipt of annual grants) 10s per child per annum; but of course in order to enable the average of schools to do this, the maximum grant obtainable by any one school must be higher than 10s per child, and we recommend that it never be allowed to exceed 15s. Not many schools, however, would ever attain this maximum, and an average grant of 10s per child over schools with an average attendance of 1,500,000 children would not be exceeded in many years. If half of this sum were thrown on the local taxation of the country, the payment from the rates would be 5s per child, or £375,000. In addition to this the salaries of the examiners, their travelling expenses, clerks' expenses for the additional duties thrown upon the clerks of the peace and county treasurers, and a certain amount of expense for printing, would have to be provided from the rates. Allowing three examiners for every county in England and Wales, these expenses would stand thus:
| £ |
| Salaries of 156 examiners at £150 | 23,400 |
| Travelling expenses of examiners | 20,000 |
| Clerks, &c. | 10,000 |
| £53,400 |
Thus the total amount chargeable on the rates from all these payments would not for several years exceed £428,400. Assuming the annual value of the rateable property in England to be about £86,000,000, a rate of 1¼d would raise about £447,000, which is above the amount required. Supposing the bulk of the schools should become qualified to avail themselves of the grant, and taking the increase of the population into account, the local grant might reach an average of 5s per child for 2,000,000 children, which would raise the whole local expenditure to about £560,000 or something more than a rate of 1½d.
The annual grants to be given upon inspection, together with several other items, would still remain chargeable to State funds. The most important of these would be building grants, inspection, grants to training colleges, and office expenses in
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London. The building grants will decrease slowly, and we may allow for them £100,000; for inspection there will probably be an increase of one-half, or £60,000; the office expenses are £17,000; and about £75,000 will be required by the training colleges, so that the amount of public assistance to be given to popular education will not exceed for several years the following estimate:
ESTIMATE OF PUBLIC EXPENDITURE ON THE EDUCATION OF 1,500,000 CHILDREN
FROM GENERAL TAXATION
| £ | | |
| Grants for annual maintenance | 375,000 | |
| Building grants | 100,000 | |
| Inspection | 60,000 | |
| Training colleges | 75,000 | |
| Office | 17,000 | |
| Miscellaneous, say | 3,000 | |
| | 630,000 |
FROM LOCAL TAXATION
| £ | |
| Grants towards annual maintenance | 375,000 | |
| Expenses of management and examination | 53,400 | |
| | 428,400 |
| |
£1,058,400 |
It may be desirable here to repeat that in calculating the expenses of schools, we have estimated the proper number of pupil-teachers as greater than at present. One pupil-teacher for every 30 children seems to us the smallest number which can work a school with thorough efficiency. The original scheme of the Committee of Council contemplated one for every 25. And when the number was raised from 25 to 40, it was with the hope that the schools would themselves in time supply the deficiency. This of course increases the cost of education, for pupil-teachers cost on an average £15 a year each; but then undoubtedly they constitute the most successful feature of the present system.
To the above estimate must be added the grant to night schools. The amount of this it is impossible exactly to calculate. It is greatly to be desired that night schools should be multiplied; but the assistance they will demand from Government is rather organization than pecuniary support.
It should at the same time be observed that we shall endeavour in a subsequent part (Part V.) of our Report to show that con-
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slderable assistance may be derived from the charities under an improved system of administration. In places where the charities can be made sufficient, the Committee of Council, in whose hands we propose to place all these funds, may ultimately withdraw its aid.
SECTION VI
INSPECTION
In the 4th Chapter we have described the advantages with which periodical inspection of the schools is accompanied, and we have shown what are the limits of its utility.
The only point which calls for remark is its denominational character.
The Inspectors of Church of England schools are always in fact clergymen. The rule upon the subject is contained in an Order of Council that no Inspector is to be appointed without the concurrence of the Archbishop of the province, who may at any time annul the appointment, by revoking his consent. The British and Foreign School Society, the Wesleyan Committee of Education, and the Catholic Poor School Committee, have each a similar veto upon the appointment of the Inspectors by whom their schools are to be inspected. The practical result of this is that there are three distinct sets of Inspectors, one composed of clergymen for the Church of England, another composed of laymen for Protestant Dissenters and Jews, and a third composed of Roman Catholics for the Roman Catholics. There Is thus a threefold division of the country into districts. The districts of the Church of England Inspectors on account of their number are of a comparatively convenient size, but the others are very large, and involve some additional expense and some loss of time in travelling. There are only three Roman Catholic Inspectors, and the whole country is divided between them.
The Inspectors of the Church of England inquire into the Inspection into the religious as well as the secular instruction given in the schools. The Inspectors of other schools do not.
The adoption of a local instead of a denominational distribution of Inspectors would have advantages in point of convenience and economy. But we cannot recommend such a measure, because we feel convinced that the managers of a great majority of schools would object to being placed under the Inspector or Examiner of a
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different communion from their own. Neither do we propose to disturb the existing regulations on the appointment of Inspectors, as they are considered of importance by the different religious communities, and as they are not used in an illiberal spirit.
With regard to the subjects of instruction to be inquired into by the Inspectors, however, the majority of us think that the rule should be made uniform, and that the inquiries of the Inspectors should be confined in all cases to the secular instruction; leaving the religious instruction to be secured and inquired into by the authorities of the religious communities to which the school belongs. The Church of England schools would then be in the same position as those of the Roman Catholics and of the Protestant Dissenters. Their religious instruction would be inquired into by members of their own Church, an inquiry which the majority think might be appropriately and safely left to Diocesan Inspectors. The minority are of a different opinion. They think that to prohibit the Inspectors appointed by the Committee of Council from examining religious teaching in Church of England schools, would, under present circumstances, be attended with serious evils, and that such a course would tend to injure the religious teaching of the schools. In their judgment there is no ground for expecting that the Diocesan Inspection can be armed with such power and authority as to make it safe to dispense with the religious inspection of the Inspectors of the Committee of Council. We have discussed the question among ourselves at the length which its great importance deserves. As it is one which has long been before the public, we do not think it necessary to state the arguments on either side; and as we are nearly equally divided, we abstain from making any recommendation on the subject.
SECTION VII
BOOKS, MAPS, DIAGRAMS &c.
The book department of the Committee of Council still remains to be considered. The teachers of elementary schools are more dependent than those of the higher schools on the quality of the books. The Committee of Council has not neglected this important department of the subject. It issues a list, bringing elementary books of all kinds before the notice of managers, and by grants of money assists in the purchase of them. In its printed circular on this subject it states, "that while by the aid of religious associations the managers
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of elementary schools have generally been enabled to procure a sufficient supply of Bibles and books of religious instruction, other lesson books have often been either wanting or very scantily furnished; and this evil has been increasingly felt since the standard of instruction has been raised by the operation of the Minutes of Council of August and December 1846. The Committee of Council on Education have therefore acceded to an almost universal sense of the importance of introducing a better supply of such lesson books in addition to the books of religious instruction, and have determined to make grants for this purpose." It proceeds to state, "that the difficulty of school managers does not consist in providing the means of reference to works of a comparatively expensive character, but in putting class books into the hands of each scholar, and furnishing the school with large maps and diagrams for class teaching; it is to such works that my Lords have desired to confine the list." Publishers of the books, maps, and diagrams included in the schedules allow a discount averaging about 40 per cent to those schools which purchase them through the medium of the Committee of Council, and towards the purchase at the reduced prices, grants are made at the rate of 10d per scholar, according to the average number in attendance during the year preceding the application; provided that no less than 20d per scholar be subscribed, on the part of the school, to meet such grants. Evening schools in connexion with day schools and normal schools are admitted to the benefit of these grants; and evening schools not annexed to day schools and schoolmasters' associations may apply for books at the reduced prices, and, under certain conditions, may receive a grant. Books, &c., may be applied for once a year at the reduced prices; but grants in aid are not made oftener than once in three years. The books may be purchased by the teachers and pupils at the reduced prices; and whenever there is a grant an allowance in proportion must be made to the masters and scholars purchasing the books. The name of every teacher and scholar buying a book must be written, as well as the name of the school, on the inside of the cover and on the title page of the book. In compiling the list the Committee of Council take as its basis the works submitted to them by educational publishers and societies. They reserve to themselves a liberty of rejection, which is exercised on two grounds; (1) the unsuitableness of the work for elementary education; (2) its belonging to a class too numerous to be comprised within the limits of the list.
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Among the principal classes of works excluded are works in ancient history, ancient and modern languages, biography, historical and geographical accounts of separate countries, other than England, Scotland, and Ireland; reading lesson books not forming part of a series; collections of vocal music unaccompanied by instruction.
The list undergoes constant revision, and any book which has been on it for three years, and has during that time failed to get into use, is struck off.
The Committee of Council, in the circular accompanying their list of books, guard themselves, as far as words can guard them, against the assumption of anything like a censorship, or the recommendation of any particular books. Their principle, which is clearly enough laid down, is, to place on their list all books not excluded either by the inappropriateness of the subject, or by the inundation of books of the same description; and to retain on the list every book once placed there, unless its failure to sell, after three years' experience, shall have practically condemned it.
But though the intention of the Committee of Council is clear, it is impossible that a Government list should not involve some of the consequences of an authoritative selection, both in the way of sanction and of condemnation. Thus, on the one hand, books known to contain errors, and therefore, in their present state, to be unfit for use in schools, are, in effect, to some extent maintained in circulation by the Government which, as it repudiates all censorship, is unable to condemn and remove them; while, on the other hand, classes of books, such as reading books not forming parts of a series, continuous narratives, and biographies, are unavoidably kept out of sight and discountenanced by rules of exclusion the only object of which is to confine the list within feasible bounds.
There can be little doubt that the list has hitherto tended to enlarge the repertory of school books by introducing to managers works of intrinsic merit, from whatever quarter they might proceed; but the point has now probably been reached at which, this good object having been effected, the list, from the necessary exclusion of large classes of works, will begin to restrict the repertory of books rather than to enlarge it.
The machinery of this department must be very expensive in proportion to the grant administered. The whole grant last year was £5,683. To administer this sum, there is a separate office in Great George Street, Westminster, with a staff of clerks. Messrs.
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Longman's agency for collecting, packing, and transmitting the books amounted to £1,000.
The arrangement we shall propose with regard to the annual grant will supersede the necessity of a special grant on this account. Booksellers will, no doubt, allow the same discount to managers of schools which they now allow to Government; and it will be to their interest to circulate good lists of school books, and to make all desirable arrangements for agency, the expense of which is now incurred by the Government.
We cannot pass from this topic without pointing out the great services which may yet be rendered to popular education by persons possessing the peculiar talent of writing good books for children. Those which have come under our observation, though many of them possess considerable merit, leave much to be desired. This remark is true with regard to reading books especially. It is commonly supposed that reading is the most elementary of all subjects of instruction, yet it is plain that to read with Intelligence, correctness, and taste is a rare accomplishment, even among the most highly educated classes, and that it is impossible a child can attain this faculty unless the book used is thoroughly suited to its understanding, and calculated to awaken its interest.
The Irish reading-books are the most popular of all, and their cheapness and completeness as a series have rendered their introduction into the schools of this country almost an era in popular education. Yet schoolmasters have reason to complain that the books of this series abound with words, needlessly introduced, which are quite incomprehensible to a child; that the poetry is taken from inferior sources; that dry outlines of grammar and geography (subjects which should be taught in a separate form) are unsuitably introduced; that the history is epitome, destitute of picturesqueness, and incapable of striking the imagination and awakening the sentiments of a child. The fifth book is greatly taken up with science in a form too technical for the purpose. If science is to be taught by means of reading books, care must be taken to translate it into familiar language, and to enlist the child's curiosity by illustrations drawn from daily life.
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PART II
Education of Pauper Children
We shall consider the education of pauper children under the following heads:
I. The education of pauper children in workhouses.
II. The education of pauper children in district and separate schools.
III. The education of outdoor pauper children.
IV. Conclusions.
I.
THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IN WORKHOUSES
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 directed the Poor Law Board to regulate the education of the children in the workhouses. In obedience to this enactment, the Poor Law Board, by their consolidated order, Article 114, ordered that:
"The boys and girls who are inmates of the workhouse shall, for three working hours at least every day, be instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the principles of the Christian religion; and such other instruction shall be imparted to them as may fit them for service and train them to habits of usefulness, industry, and virtue."
The practical result of the provision in the Act, and of the order made in consequence of it, was to leave the education of pauper children to be conducted in the workhouses under the authority of the Boards of Guardians. The evils of workhouse education arising from the contamination of the children by intercourse with the adult paupers; the absence of moral, intellectual, or industrial training; the habit contracted by the children, of regarding the workhouse as a home, and pauperism as an inheritance, soon forced themselves on public attention In a volume, on the training of pauper children, published by the Poor Law Commissioners in 1841, these evils are pointed out, and they are insisted on by all the witnesses whose experience entitles them to speak on the subject. The following selections
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from the volume just referred to, the reports of the Inspectors of Poor Law Schools, the oral evidence of Mr. Tufnell, and the written answers of witnesses who have answered our circular of questions, illustrate their character.
In their volume on the training of pauper children, the Poor Law Commissioners say:*
Though our Assistant Commissioners describe in their reports many improvements which have been effected in the management of the schools for pauper children, as compared with the corruption to which these children were exposed in the workhouses of parishes and incorporations before the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act, and the almost invariable neglect even of instruction then prevalent, yet they advert to various considerations of general policy, showing it to be undesirable that the pauper children should be reared in workhouses.
The moral and religious influences of education are not, we fear, without many obstructions when the school is within the workhouse, even when it is conducted by an efficient teacher; but under ordinary circumstances, when the deficiencies of the schoolmaster are combined with the pernicious influence of the associations inseparable from residence in a workhouse inhabited by a class whose indigence is often the sign of a low moral condition, we are convinced that we cannot hope for much beneficial influence from the school on the future characters and habits of the children, and we fear much evil and disaster may ensue. The children in workhouses, even in those in which the classification is maintained with the greatest strictness, are more or less associated with the women. The adult single women in the house have often children whom they are of course permitted to see, and the girls cannot learn any domestic duty without coming occasionally in contact with this class, who are much employed in household work. Such associations, even where much vigilance exists, are, we are convinced, polluting. A workhouse cannot, with the greatest attention to classification, be made a place in which young girls can be removed from the chances of corruption. These evils are faithfully represented in the report of Mr. Tufnell and of our other Assistant Commissioners.
In a report to the Committee of Council made in 1852, eleven years after the publication of this, Mr. Tufnell says:†
It is not often that we can penetrate into what I may call the inner life of a workhouse school, and trace out from genuine sources the working of the system. On this account I am induced to insert the following extracts from a letter addressed to me by an intelligent workhouse teacher. The school to which it refers is in one of the ordinary workhouses of the south of England; and there is nothing unusual in the character of the district, or in the internal arrangements of the house, nor any indication that would lead an inquirer to conclude that the case was anywise exceptional:
"In compliance with your request I send you an account of the union school which I have conducted a little more than six months.
*Rep. 1841, pp. vii.-x.
†Min. 1852-3, pp. 51, 52.
[page 354]
"I need scarcely remind you of the state in which I found the school. It appears that the boys had for years formed habits of lying, stealing, and destroying property, and that their morals were not merely neglected, but actually corrupted by those who should have fitted them for virtuous and respectable living. I have now under my care some of the boys who carried on a system of burglary for three years undetected, and who were in the habit of using the vilest language imaginable to their teacher when reprimanded by him.
"The instruction given in the school seems to have been of the most meagre kind. It does not appear that any attention whatever had been paid to the smaller boys. A few of the bigger boys could read tolerably well, but could not understand what they read; they could repeat the Church Catechism by rote; they could write in copybooks; live of them professed to do sums in reduction, and two professed to know vulgar fractions. Yet there was not one boy in the whole school who understood numeration, or who could do a sum in simple addition well."
In a report to the Committee of Council the following illustration is given by Dr. Temple of the character of workhouse training, as an instance of the discouragements to which teachers in workhouse schools are subject. He says:
The workhouses are such as to ruin the effect of most of their teaching. "I think," writes one of the teachers, "the boys in this union will never be dispauperised; they have to mix with the men, most of whom are 'gaol birds.' I have found them talking to the boys about, the gaol, and of 'bright fellows finding their way to the gaol'." Another says, "I really can do nothing of any good in this place; the guardians will not give any land to be cultivated, and the dull deadening wool-picking goes on, and I have to sit sucking my fingers. What shall I do, sir? I cannot train the children. It appears to me to be absurd to tell these boys to be industrious, and to cultivate a proper spirit of independence, and then, after they have done schooling, to turn them adrift, with no chance whatever of being able to earn an honest living. I should be glad, sir, if you could place me in some station where there is some real work to be done, I do not care of how rough a character." "Nothing can be done while the boys are in the union," says another. "The common topic of conversation among the children is the arrival of the women of the town to be confined here," says another. Another, writing from a union where the boys work in the field with the men, remarks, "My work of three weeks is ruined in as many minutes."
With regard to the girls, the following is the evidence of Miss L. Twining in her answers to our written questions. Speaking of a visit which she paid to a small workhouse in the midland counties, she observes:*
This small workhouse illustrated another evil I have alluded to; these girls were taught household work necessarily in communication with the adults, and learnt the care and management of babies in company with their unmarried mothers, and it was impossible to avoid it, if the girls ever went beyond the limits of their school. I cannot imagine a more fatal risk than for these girls, just going out into the liberty of the world
*Answers, pp. 419, 420.
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(friendless and without protection) to see constantly before them these women with their babies; the workhouse seems their recognized home; they have (mostly) nothing to do but to sit and nurse their babies by a good fire and gossip with each other. There is no pretence at its being a place of penance or hardship, no one reproves them or endeavours to make them see their sin; why should not these girls go and do likewise? and so of course they do, and a constant supply is kept up.
She adds:
A most fatal error is that of mixing up children admitted for very short periods with the more permanent ones; such a practice should not be tolerated. In the large district schools it is endeavoured to obviate this evil, but even there it is not completely done, the orphans and permanent children being in no case entirely separate from those who stay only a few months.
In workhouse schools it is not attempted, and bitter are the complaints I hear from schoolmasters and mistresses on this point. The children of tramps or of anyone entering the house are placed in the school, and bring in with them evil enough to undo all the good that the teachers have been labouring to instil into their scholars; schoolmistresses who have the confidence of their scholars, learn a good deal of this instruction that is imparted, and shudder to find the depravity of it; or what is perhaps as bad, these children with parents must go out with them whenever they leave the house, and it must be remembered that there is no possible power to prevent these mothers or fathers taking their discharge, - going out perhaps for a day or two, it may be on pretence of seeking for work, or more possibly to attend a neighbouring fair. I have been told the kind of stories these children then bring back with them.
A good schoolmistress was asked why she seemed so depressed and spiritless about her work in a workhouse school; and she said it was because she felt she was training up the girls for a life of vice and depravity; it was impossible under existing circumstances that it should be otherwise; one after another went out to carry on the lessons she had learnt from the adults, and she returned like them, ruined and degraded, to be a life-long pauper.
Mr. Cumin says:*
It seems impossible to exaggerate the spirit of lying, low cunning, laziness, insubordination, and profligacy which characterize the pauper class in workhouses; and this spirit naturally infects the mass of poor children who are born and bred up in so pestilential an atmosphere. The master of the Bedminster union, where old and young work together in the garden, told me that he could observe a marked deterioration in them after they come away from such outdoor work. Moreover, I had a list furnished to me by the master and the mistress of the Plymouth workhouse of boys and girls who had left the union. This return, as far as possible, showed what had become of each individual child. Of 74 girls, I found that no fewer than 37 had returned to the workhouse; and of 56 boys, 10 or 12 had returned, many of them several times Lastly, I find upon looking over the list
*Report, p. 40.
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furnished, that out of the 74 girls, only 13 are known to be doing well, and of the 56 boys, only 18. It may be observed in passing, that this confirms the general evidence, which goes to prove that the condition of the girls is worse than that of the boys.
The bad influences of workhouses are not confined to the formation of vicious habits. They have an even stronger and better marked tendency to produce helplessness, and to prevent the growth of independence of character, than to encourage vice. Mr. Cumin gives the following description of the workhouse schools which came under his observation:*
I know nothing more pathetic than a workhouse school. No human creatures ought to excite a more lively sympathy. Without home, without parents, often without a single friend, they are alone in the world from the moment of their birth. Whilst one of the pauper nurses at Bedminster was sorting the infants in order to distinguish the orphans and the deserted from the rest, I asked the name of one that was rolling about the floor. "Fanny Step," was the reply. Why "Fanny Step," I rejoined. "Because, sir, she was found on a door-step." Such is the history of many a workhouse girl. Doomed by necessity never to know the meaning of that familiar word, home - cut off from the exercise of the ordinary affections - many of them diseased in body and feeble in mind - these poor children exhibit little of the vigour and joyousness of youth. Listless and subservient in manner, they seem to be broken down by misfortune before they have entered upon life. It is difficult to convey a definite idea of a child brought up from its infancy in the workhouse; but the following anecdote may help to realize it: I was examining the Bedminster workhouse boys in reading, and we came to the expression, "They broke up their household," I inquired its meaning. The boy stared, and the chaplain whispered to me, "You need not ask him that, for he never had a home." Another boy who had not been born in the house at once explained the phrase. Struck with this, I determined to put the question in another workhouse. I was in the girls' school-room at Stoke, and I desired the mistress to select a girl who had been born in the workhouse, and another who had just come in. I put the same question to the girl who had never been out of the workhouse, "What do you mean when you say that 'A man broke up his household?'" upon which she answered that the house had been broken into by robbers. She was familiar with the idea of crime. The other girl, who had lately come in, at once answered, "He sold his furniture and left the house."
He thus describes the effect of this state of mind in after life:
One of the most fatal effects produced by the pauper children being brought up in close contact with adult paupers is this, that the child loses all desire to earn its own living, and is content to spend its days in a workhouse. This is especially the case where, as in Plymouth, industrial training forms no part of the education. Boys who have never been accustomed to handle a spade, and girls who have never
*Report, p. 38.
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been accustomed to scrub the floors, naturally rebel when they are put to such work. They sigh for the workhouse, in which they can spend their lives in eating, sleeping, reading, and play. In one year in Plymouth workhouse, I was told, that an average of one child every fortnight left service to return to the workhouse. Some of those tradesmen who had taken union boys as apprentices told me that it took several years before they acquired the desire for independence - the wish to earn their own bread; and that in some cases the union apprentice would threaten to return to the workhouse the moment his master found fault with him or proposed to punish him.
In another part of a report* already quoted, Mr. Tufnell says, of a particular workhouse which he describes as a fair specimen of the system:
Instead of dispauperizing the children, it nursed them for the able-bodied men's yard and the county prison. The following statement was given to me by one of the able-bodied men, aged 21, who has himself been in the school. Replying to my questions, he counted 38 besides himself who had gone from the school to the able-bodied class. Of these 39, two are transported for 10 years, four for 15 years, and one for 20 years; twelve have been imprisoned, and only seven are doing pretty well. Some of these 39 are still almost permanently chargeable. It appears, therefore, that the boys were kept in the school until they were too old for it, and too old to be put into situations, such as are usually obtained by lads from school. No boy ought to be in a union after he has turned 13.
Mr. Hedley observes:†
Though industrial training makes the workhouse boy fitter for trade or labour than he would be without it, he cannot compete with the labourer's child brought up at home. The workhouse boy at the best is not sought after by the farmer. He has learnt to handle a spade, but he has never handled harness, he knows nothing of the farmyard, and he is not inured to weather. No system of industrial training can give boys that handiness which they acquire in real work. Few boys from the workhouse obtain places as farm labourers; nearly all are apprenticed to a trade.
The following letter from a pauper lad, although written some years ago, gives a lively illustration of the justice of these observations:
Wells Union, February 24, 1850
Sir,
To write to you I have intended this last month; I mean to find out which way I am to turn. I am the boy, William Jones by name, that came before you about two months ago, the 19th of December last, 1849. I am now in my 18th year of my age; and for these 11 years I have been an inmate in the Union, and for these four years past I have been seeking for a situation, but I find it of no use. I have been very well educated the time I have been to school; I can
Min. 1852-3, pp. 51, 52.
Rep. p. 152.
[page 358]
read, and write a good hand, as well as any of the boys, and why should I he kept in this place? If I stay here till they get me a situation I shall be entirely ruined. I wish to state my case to you because I should not have any noise. If they get me a place of farmers' service, I should be of no use, no more than a, child four years of age. I can neither milk, plough, reap, nor sow, nor anything of that business. I went to Cosely about a fortnight ago, to Mr. Boyd, to get a situation; he ask me whether I could do anything of the plowing? I did not know anything about it; I could not tell him I did, as I had been brought up in the workhouse. Sir, to tell you the whole of my case, I am actually ashamed to see me here. If I stay here another twelvemonth I shall be an object of oppression all the days of my life.
I remain, respectfully.
Your most obedient servant,
(Signed) William Jones.
Children brought up in workhouses come to regard them as their homes, and this was pointed out and a remedy was proposed for it by the Poor Law Inquiry Commissioners. They proposed, instead of one large workhouse for a union under one roof, four smaller workhouses for the aged, the children, the able-bodied males, and the able-bodied females. "The children," say the Commissioners, "who enter a workhouse, quit it, if they ever quit it, corrupted where they were well disposed, and hardened where they were vicious."
Unhappily this advice has been disregarded. A great number of large workhouses have been built in which provision is made for children under the same roof In other unions, where a separate building for the children has been erected, it is near the union house. Mr. Senior visited last year the workhouse at Southampton. The building appropriated to the children is distinct, but is separated from that containing the adults only by the street. The master and mistress admitted that the children frequently turned out ill, that the girls especially lost their places, returned to the workhouse, and were immediately ruined by the adults. The principal causes of corruption, they said, were the degraded state in which they arrived, the meetings, however rare, with the adults, and the visits from relations. The paupers, they said, are a tribe, the same names, from the same families and the same streets, fill the workhouse; it sometimes contains three generations. All the associations and feelings of the children when they come are vicious. "One girl," said the mistress, "and not a bad specimen of a pauper girl, said to me the other day, 'My cousin,
[page 359]
Sally, left the house some time ago, and now she has come back with a baby. I hope soon to go out, and to come back too with a baby.'" "Could any of the children," I asked, "on their arrival, repeat the Lord's prayer?" "Not one of them," they answered, "had ever heard of it." Their relations are allowed to see them once a week. The visit generally undoes all the moral good that has been done during the previous week.
The difficulty of getting good teachers for workhouse schools is an objection to their efficiency, only less serious than the difficulty of overcoming the bad moral influences of the workhouses. The difficulties relate to the salaries of the teachers and the peculiar character of their duties. Their position is complicated and peculiar.
By the Poor Law Amendment Act, the selection of officers, including schoolmasters and mistresses, is left to the guardians. Unhappily the majority of the elected guardians of our unions in the agricultural districts, and in all except the very largest towns, are taken from a class generally indifferent to education, often hostile to it.
In 1846 the Government interfered. Parliament granted £30,000 a year to be applied in payment of schoolmasters and mistresses. Nearly the same sum has been granted during every subsequent year. It is included in the estimate of the Poor Law Board, and is administered in the following manner:
The Committee of Council make no grants towards workhouse schools beyond the cost of inspecting them, but they classify the teachers, having reference both to the abilities of the teacher and to the efficiency of the school, in grades, distinguished by certificates of efficiency, competency, probation, or permission. Certificates of the three classes first mentioned are further distinguished, as being of the first, second, or third divisions. If the teacher of a workhouse school obtains one of these certificates the guardians receive a, certain sum towards his salary from the grant voted for that purpose by Parliament, and included in the annual estimates of the Poor Law Board. The minimum is £30 for a certificate of efficiency, £25 for one of competency, £20 for one of probation, and £15 for one of permission; but this minimum is subject to increase up to a certain maximum by a capitation grant for the average number of children in attendance.
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The amounts are shown in the following Table:*
The following conditions are attached to the grant:
1. An accurate record of the daily attendance in the school must be kept.
2. The sums set forth in the above Table are to be paid to the teachers in addition to residence and rations, and where these are not provided, the guardians will be required to allow the teacher the sum of £15 a year in lieu thereof, in order to entitle them to receive from the Parliamentary grant the sum specified in the certificate.
3. The Poor Law Board requires every Board of Guardians, as conditions of these grants, to see that convenient and respectably furnished apartments be provided for the teachers in workhouses; that they be supplied with rations, the same in kind and quality as the master of the workhouse; that they be subjected to no menial offices; that they have proper assistance in the management of the children when not in school, so that they may have time for exercise, and for the education of their pupil-teachers.
*Consol. Min. p. 25.
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4. Wherever the workhouse school inspectors recommend that any workhouse school be furnished with books and the necessary school apparatus, if the guardians fail to provide the books and apparatus which are necessary, the Poor Law Board will advise the withholding of the grant, leaving the entire salary of the teachers to be defrayed out of the funds of the union.
The guardians are required to guarantee to the master a minimum salary, and if he fail in obtaining any certificate or obtain one entitling him to a less sum than the guaranteed minimum, the loss falls on the guardians. This, however, scarcely ever occurs. The guardians always fix the guaranteed minimum much below the scale adopted by the Poor Law Board.
The result of the mode of payment is that the income of the teacher depends, to a considerable extent, on the number of the scholars, but the number of the scholars varies inversely as the efficiency of the school. If the school is good and the scholars are well trained, they are sought after by persons who require their services, and this is not compensated, as would be the case in an ordinary school, by an increase in the popularity of the school, and, therefore, in the number of the scholars who enter it. No one, except from necessity, goes to a workhouse school; thus the teacher's duties and his interests are brought into direct opposition, in so far as the capitation fees are concerned. His duty is to fit them to leave the school, his interest is to keep them in it.
The rule is open to the further objection, that as the whole time of the teacher has to be devoted to the children, his labour does not depend on their numbers. Indeed, in some respects it is less where the children are numerous. With a large number classification is easier, and monitors, upon whom much of the routine work may be devolved, are more easily procured.
The irregularity of the stipend is also described as "unsatisfactory, both to the teachers and to the guardians. The latter do not know what ought to be paid, the former what he is to receive. Dissatisfaction ensues on both sides. Sometimes the teacher thinks he has received too little; the guardians always fancy that too much has been paid." All the inspectors denounce the mischief of this rule.*
*See, for example, Mr. Ruddock's Rep., Min., 1857-8, pp. 59-61.
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This point, as well as the inadequacy of the salaries of
the teachers, was urged upon the Poor Law Board by the Committee of Council in 1852. A correspondence took place between the two offices, in which the Committee of Council endeavoured to persuade the Poor Law Board to raise the salaries of the teachers, to augment the capitation fees, and to make a rule by which the emoluments of the teachers should be secured against diminution by the efficiency with which the children were fitted for service.
After a table showing that the average emoluments of the first-class masters in common elementary schools amounted to £133 a year, and those of the first-class masters in workhouse schools amount only to £65 a year, the Committee say:*
It is notorious to all persons in any degree acquainted with the state of opinion among elementary schoolmasters, or among candidates for that office, that workhouse schools are regarded by them with the utmost dislike. The workhouse schoolmaster has in any case to make great sacrifices. He has no assured vacations; his personal liberty is abridged, in comparison with other members of his profession, by the necessary rules of a workhouse; he is subordinate to, and dependent for his comfort upon, persons who are frequently less cultivated than himself: he has a less promising class of children to deal with; he has more to do for them. And if, in addition to all these drawbacks, his emoluments, as is now the case, are liable to fluctuate from causes over which he has no control, and are also disproportionately less than those obtainable by the superior members of his profession elsewhere, it may happen indeed occasionally that the spirit of self-sacrifice will retain 14 good master at the work; but, in the great majority of instances, such masters will be deterred from entering upon it, or will be driven away.
It is unnecessary to repeat that the unfavourable circumstances which, surround a pauper child, including not unfrequently a deteriorated organization, cannot be counteracted through education unless its remedies are skilfully and vigorously applied. The schoolmaster is part only of the education which the poorest child of independent parents receives; he is everything to the workhouse child.
The Poor Law Board's circular of the 6th of May 1850 was framed to meet certain anomalies which were found to arise from the employment of highly salaried (because highly qualified) teachers in small workhouse schools. In the correspondence between this office and the Poor Law Board which preceded the issuing of that circular, it was urgently represented that the true remedy was to be sought in a more equal distribution of the children among fewer schools, according to the intention of the Legislature as declared in the Acts 7 & 8 Vict. cap. 101, and 11 & 12 Vict. cap. 82, and that the present plan would operate in the discouraging manner which is now found to be the result of it.
It is obvious that the efficiency of a workhouse teacher can have no tendency to fill his school, though, by fitting his boys better and
*Minutes, 1852-3, p. 10.
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earlier for situations, it may lower the average number of children under instruction. While, therefore, as a general principle, it may not be improper to maintain that his salary shall bear a relation to the number of children he has to teach, as well as to his own attainments, it appears to be no less right that there should be a discretionary power to save him from the hardship and lottery of sudden fluctuations, and from the injustice of losing by the success of his labours. It may be mentioned that Mr. George Greenwood, the master of the Gainsborough Workhouse school, was positively such a loser in 1851, as compared with 1850.
The answer of the Poor Law Board was as follows:
The Poor Law Board cannot sanction a scale of fixed salaries for workhouse teachers which would confer a higher amount of remuneration on them than is generally paid to the master and matrons, who are their superiors in office, and to whose authority they are necessarily in some degree subject.
The Poor Law Board cannot assent to a higher scale of fixed salaries for workhouse teachers than that contained in their circular of the 6th of May 1850; but the Board do not object to the proposed increase in the fees to be paid to each teacher in respect of the number of scholars in his or her school.
As, however, the Board consider that the circumstances must be completely exceptional under which they could feel justified in assenting to the payment of the fees in respect of scholars who had ceased to be such, the Board would suggest to the Committee of Council the inexpediency of giving any instructions to Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools which might have the effect of systematically inducing them to recommend such a payment.
The conclusion from this appears to us to be that the plan of paying capitation fees is, in the case of workhouse schools, a bad one, and that sufficient salaries ought to be paid to the teachers, regulated as to amount by the goodness of their school and their own qualifications, as tested by inspection, but not depending on the number of the scholars.
There is abundant evidence to show that the Committee of Council were right in their assertion, that "the workhouse schoolmaster has in any case to make great sacrifices." The evidence given already as to the character of the scholars proves sufficiently that their position must be very uninviting; but nothing puts this in so clear a light as the result of the experiment tried by the Committee of Council, of training teachers for pauper children at Kneller Hall, an institution which was established for the express purpose. Its failure was predicted soon after its creation.
"Kneller Hall," said Mr. Symons,* "is training a set of men in
*Minutes, 1852.
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a manner which will make them unhappy in the posts thrown open to them. The office of a workhouse teacher shares the disrepute of the locality in which it is placed. Few competent teachers can be got to accept the post. It has its peculiar désagrémens, owing to the necessity that the master of the workhouse should have control over the whole staff in it, and the likelihood that in exercising it over the schoolmaster he is not qualified to appreciate the feelings of a man of education and comparative refinement."
Kneller Hall struggled on for a few years and was given up. If the expectations of Parliament had been fulfilled, and district schools had been established throughout England and Wales, it would have been a most useful seminary of teachers, but its scholars were too good to accept or to retain the ill-paid, irksome office of a workhouse schoolmaster. The causes of its failure are explained at length by Dr. Temple, the late Principal, in some observations published in Mr. Moseley's Report in 1855.* The substance of his statement is that the salaries were so inadequate that "a man who could instantly command £100 a year, if he had been trained elsewhere, cannot get more than £60 if he has been here;" that the teachers, though superior in education to the masters of the workhouses, were their inferiors in position, and were often treated by them with jealousy and incivility; that the labour was excessive, as the teacher had the whole care of the children from morning to night; that the rooms were very uncomfortable, and the rations sometimes insufficient. The case may be shortly summed up thus: The workhouse teacher for £60 a year has to teach and superintend a number of children of the most degraded character from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. for seven days in the week, throughout the whole year, and under the authority of a man less cultivated than himself. The ordinary teacher earns £100 a year by teaching children of a higher class for five hours in the day, on five days in the week, and for 44 weeks in the year, under the occasional supervision of persons to whom he is accustomed to look up as his social superiors. Under these circumstances it is idle to expect that any but a very inferior class of teachers can be procured for schools conducted in workhouses.
This evidence, which it would be easy to increase to almost any extent, satisfies us that children cannot be educated in
*Min., 1855-6, pp. 96-99.
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workhouses in a satisfactory manner, because the influences of workhouses are in themselves pernicious, and because proper teachers cannot be induced to take charge of the schools.
There is some evidence in opposition to this conclusion, to which we may shortly refer.
Mr. Fraser describes the "satisfactory condition of many of the workhouse schools in his district." His evidence, however, bears principally upon the intellectual instruction, which, he says, is in several workhouses "not ambitious in its range, but thoroughly sound of its kind; the writing, almost without exception, good; and the reading of the girls in the Hereford workhouse the best for articulation and freedom from provincialisms that I heard." This he explains as follows:
"I attribute the efficiency of workhouse schools chiefly to the operation of the following causes:
1. The regularity of the attendance of the children. Every child in the house, unless sick, is certain to be in school.
2. The adequacy of the teaching power. The schools that I saw were all small, and without pupil-teachers, but in no case with more than 20 children to the single instructor.
3. The unambitious character of the instruction given, which gives time for what is taught being taught thoroughly.
4. The mixture of industrial with mental work, the advantages of which I fully admit where the combination is possible. These children rarely receive more than three hours' mental culture a day.
5. The constant intercourse between the children and their teacher. They are thus out of the reach of (what are too often) the vulgarizing and demoralizing influences of home."*
This is confirmed by Mr. Hedley, who says:†
But if we compare workhouse with other schools, and allow that the boys in the former are superior to those in the latter in reading, writing, &c., I think the difference can be wholly accounted for by the fact that the workhouse boys are perfectly regular in attendance, are under complete control both in and out of school hours, and owing to their small number are constantly taught by the master himself. If boys in ordinary schools, under trained masters, attended school regularly for three hours a day, I do not doubt that the standard of attainments would approach that in workhouse schools.
One beneficial effect of industrial training in workhouse schools is found in the improved health and spirits of the boys. It is obvious
*Report, pp. 89, 90.
†Report, pp. 151, 152.
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that this recommendation disappears in the case of boys who are at full liberty to work and play.
Mr Browne* says: "I have long felt that good schools are quite practicable in workhouses. There certainly are good workhouse schools, and there is no doubt that many children have left such schools who have turned out well and are now earning an honest living." He adds, however, "experience has proved that certain arrangements are necessary in workhouses, and especially separation of the children from adult paupers and their regular employment in field work if possible." The evidence quoted above appears to us to prove that these arrangements are hardly ever effectively carried out; and even if they were universally, the objection to workhouse schools would not be removed, unless a more strict separation of the children, especially the females, from intercourse with the adult inmates could be secured, of which we entertain little hope.
II
THE EDUCATION OF PAUPER CHILDREN IN DISTRICT AND SEPARATE SCHOOLS
The evils of workhouse education described in the last section were, as we have already shown, felt and described by the Poor Law Commissioners so far back as 1841. In the volume already referred to they urged upon the Government the importance of establishing district schools as a remedy for them. After referring to the evils of workhouse education in the passage already quoted, they proceed:
Under these circumstances, evidence was presented to the Committee of the House of Commons on the importance of establishing district schools, in which the orphan, illegitimate, and deserted, and children of idiots, felons, and persons physically disabled, might be reared in religion and industry, by masters and mistresses trained for the discharge of parental duties to these outcast and friendless children. The Committee recommended to the House of Commons a combination of unions for the establishment of district schools, and our subsequent experience abundantly proves that such an arrangement is necessary to the success of our efforts to place these children in a career of virtuous and successful industry.
Some apprehensions of an increased expense consequent on the adoption of these proposals are, we conceive, attributable to the erroneous notion that new buildings will be required for these district schools.
*Min. 1857-8, p. 157.
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We are, on the contrary, convinced that in most, if not all cases, arrangements may be made for the establishment of such schools, without incurring the expense of the erection of new buildings. In almost every district of convenient size, a workhouse, abandoned on the formation of some union (or which might be relinquished on the adoption of these arrangements), would be available for the reception of the children. Where such a building does not exist, there are few districts in which an old mansion might not be procured for a small rental. By these and similar expedients we are convinced that convenient arrangements might be made for assembling the children of many unions in a district school with little expense.
The great majority of pauper children maintained in workhouses have no near relatives, or have been deserted by them, or are the offspring of felons and persons physically or mentally incapable of guardianship, or are illegitimate. Their removal to a district school, therefore, is not open to the objection of an interference with any natural sympathies.
The results of these recommendations were the following sections of the 7 & 8 Vict. c. 101 (19 August 1845):
Section 40. "It shall be lawful for the Poor Law Commissioners, as and when they may see fit, by order under their hands and seals, to combine unions or parishes not in union, or such parishes and unions, into school districts for the management of any class or classes of infant poor not above the age of sixteen years being chargeable to any such parish or union, who are orphans or are deserted by their parents, or whose parents or surviving parents or guardians are consenting to the placing of such children in the school of such district; but the Commissioners shall not include in any such district any parish any part of which would be more than fifteen miles from any other part of such district."
Section 42 provides for the election of a board of management of every such district school.
Section 43 gives to the District Board such powers as the Poor Law Commissioners may direct, and enables the Commissioners, with the consent in writing of a majority of any District Board, to purchase, hire, or erect buildings, but at an expense not exceeding one-fifth of the annual expenditure of each union or parish for poor law purposes.
Four years after, on the 31st of August 1848, the 11 & 12 Vict. cap. 82. was passed, which, after reciting that the restrictions contained in the previous Act had rendered it inoperative, repeals the prohibition of including in a district a parish any part of which should be more than 15 miles from any other part of the district, and also the limitation of the expenditure on buildings to one-fifth of the annual poor-law expenditure, in
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cases where the major part of the guardians of the unions or parishes proposed to be combined shall previously thereto consent in writing to such combination. So stands the law at present.
Its efficiency may be inferred from the following statement, which has been furnished to us by the Poor Law Board.
The whole number of district schools in England and Wales is six.
The average number of children attending them during the six months ending the 25th March 1859, was 2,682.
The Acts, therefore, as respects the establishment of district schools, have been practically inoperative. Not, however, because those schools have failed. In the few instances in which they have been established their success has been striking. The following letter from Mr. Rudge, the chaplain of the North Surrey District School, to Mr. Tufnell, the Inspector of Metropolitan District Schools, after giving a description of the state of the pauper children as they came from the workhouses and from their parents' homes, similar to those which are contained in the evidence given in the last section, proceeds to describe the condition to which the discipline of the district school raised them:*
The number of children in the establishment is, at the time I am writing, 636. There are 280 in the boys' school, 186 in the girls' school, and 170 in the infant school. I will not occupy your time in detailing their present intellectual attainments, because from your own recent inspection you are sufficiently acquainted with them. Suffice it to say, that their progress, on the whole, is entirely satisfactory to me, and I think I may add, to the board of management also.
Of the moral effects I can speak with the utmost satisfaction. The bailiff and master tradesmen are instructed to make a daily return to the schoolmaster of any disobedience or bad conduct they may notice in the boys under them. But whereas at the commencement of our labours such reports were of constant occurrence, and they had to complain of frequent insolence, and occasionally even of personal violence, they are now very rare indeed. The vicious habits which once occasioned me so much pain and anxiety have almost entirely disappeared; corporal punishment is becoming almost unknown among us; they have learnt, without any other compulsion than that of gentle persuasion, the practice of private prayer; their behaviour in chapel, once so mechanical, is now so reverent, and apparently (I hope also really) devout, as to strike every occasional visitor with surprise and delight; and while their rude behaviour has been entirely subdued by firmness, I believe that we have succeeded in gaining their confidence and even affection. Now, although I must ascribe this happy change altogether to the blessing of God, and chiefly to His blessing upon the sound religious education given in the place, and to the efforts of our earnest-minded teachers, yet I am con-
Minutes, 1850-2, pp. 65-76.
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vinced that the same results could hardly have been produced in so short a time, apart from the healthy tone which constant employment always gives to the mind. They no longer look upon labour as an irksome task, but rather as an honourable and pleasurable occupation; and I am convinced that there is not a boy in the whole school who would not shrink from a return to the workhouse as degrading, so long as it were possible to gain a livelihood by honest industry. Their very appearance is wonderfully altered for the better. They have lost the slouching gait and dogged sullen look which formerly too clearly betokened their origin and habits.
Five years afterwards Mr. Rudge reports the further progress of the school:
North Surrey District School, Anerley, February 8, 1856. - I am most glad to have the opportunity of bearing my testimony to the good effects which have resulted from one of the most wise and merciful legislative enactments for which the present reign has been distinguished - I mean the District School Act.
I have held the chaplaincy of these schools ever since they were opened in November 1850; when the children were drafted either from the various workhouses in the district, or from certain establishments for farming pauper children in the neighbourhood of the metropolis. I have, therefore, had unusual opportunities of testing the working of the two systems.
After referring to the letter just quoted as to the previous state of the children, Mr. Rudge proceeds:
In the course of the last five years 2,839 pauper children have passed under my charge. The average number of yearly admissions to the school has been 540.
The average number removed by their parents, or by order of the board of guardians, in each year, has been 252.
The whole number of children who have completed their training in the school, and been sent to permanent situations, is, up to the present date, 260.
Of the whole number admitted into the school since the commencement, only 16 have been sent back to the workhouses by the managers, from the circumstance of their having reached the age at which they become able-bodied paupers, without having obtained situations. And of these I can confidently assert that at least a moiety owed their failure either to some physical or some mental defect.
It has lately formed a part of my duty as chaplain to visit those children who have been sent to places, and to report upon their state to the board of management. I have generally found them giving satisfaction to their employers, and in the enjoyment of fair wages and kind treatment. The number of those who have returned to the school with an expression of the dissatisfaction of their employers is, on the whole, inconsiderable.
Mr. Tufnell gives the following evidence as to district schools in general:
3157. (Mr. G. Smith.) What are the moral results of education in district pauper schools, as compared with the moral results of edu-
*Minutes, 1855-6, pp. 43 to 45.
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cation in upper class schools? - I have peculiar means of finding out what, are the results in district schools, because it is the duty of the chaplains to visit the children after they go into service, which furnishes a test which perhaps you cannot apply to any other schools anywhere to the same extent. From such a source as that, and from another which I have got by always endeavouring to impress upon the masters the importance of teaching the children the art of writing letters, and then that they should write to their teachers, and sometimes to me, when they are in service, to state how they get on; from these sources I know that the number of failures in these schools are not, on the average, more than 2 or 3 per cent, and I believe that if you test the number of failures in the highest class schools, even those frequented by the peerage, you will find a greater proportion of failures in life than from the children of the district schools. I can mention one fact connected with that. When the Poor Law was first founded, some investigation was made into the education of the pauper children of London, and it was found then that the majority of the children turned out failures, that is to say, that more than 50 per cent of them were failures. They became either thieves or prostitutes, or paupers, or something of that sort. By district schools we have reduced that proportion to 2 or 3 per cent instead of 50 or 60.
3158. (Mr. Senior.) Do you know anything of the Marylebone Workhouse School? - That is a parish which has always objected to all interference of the Government, either of the Privy Council or of the Poor Law Board, and, therefore, I personally know very little about it; from other sources I know that it has been extremely badly managed.
3159. I have been told that almost all the girls proceeding from the Marylebone Workhouse School turn out prostitutes? - From good authority I have heard the same thing.
3160. (Rev. W. Rogers.) Is that school in the house? - Yes, it is in the workhouse. I should add that the guardians are, at the present time, building schools out of London, by which they hope to remedy that evil.
3161. (Mr. Senior.) What is the proportion of girls from the district schools who become prostitutes? - Very few indeed. Last year, from the North Surrey School, I think there was one girl who the chaplain thought had fallen, but he was not quite certain; and from the South Metropolitan School there was one, I think. That is one out of about 200.
3162. (Chairman.) Over what period? - In the South Metropolitan District School during the year 1858, 81 boys and 102 girls have been sent out to service; of these only four have been known to lose their places from misconduct. In the next year 237 children were put out to service, and one girl of those was known to have fallen.
Such being the success of district schools, the question naturally arises why they are not universally established, or rather why their establishment is almost universally refused or neglected.
The real obstacles to their establishment appear to be three:
First, the clause of the 11 & 12 Victoria, cap. 82, which requires the consent in writing of the majority of the guardians of each union, to its combination in a school district, any part
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of which shall be more than 15 miles from any other part of such district, and to the expenditure for building purposes of more than a fifth of the annual poor rate.
Secondly, the clause of the 7 & 8 Victoria, cap. 101, which empowers the guardians to send to the district school only orphans, deserted children, and children whose parents, or surviving parent or guardian, consent to their being so sent.
Thirdly, the absence of any department expressly and imperatively charged with the duty of endeavouring to effect the objects of the Acts.
The force of the first of these obstacles is indicated by the Poor Law Commissioners in their Report of 1850.*
Little progress has been made in the formation of school districts under the provisions of the 7 & 8 Vict. c. 101; and although the matter has in some instances been repeatedly brought before the Guardians of the unions proposed to be included in districts, the number of those opposed to their formation has appeared to be such as to preclude the hope, at all events for the present, and especially in the rural unions, that the provisions of the law in regard to such schools can be made generally available.†
The mode in which the clause requiring the consent of the guardians acts is well explained in the following extract from Mr. Bowyer's report of 1851:
The parts of my district which, from the density of the population, the grouping of several unions within a small area, the overcrowded state of some workhouses (to which the removal of the children would be a relief), and the comparative emptiness of others (which at a small expense might be converted into a district school), present the greatest prospect of success in inducing two or three unions and parishes to form themselves into a school district, are the neighbourhoods of Norwich, of Ipswich, and of Wolverhampton, and the group of towns called the Potteries. In the first two I sounded the dispositions of the boards towards the plan, and found them adverse. In the last, a plan of a district school was, in 1850, proposed to three boards by the poor law inspector of the district, but was rejected by the one whose consent was the most essential to its adoption. The causes of failure in these instances have been, the satisfactory state of some workhouse school which it was proposed to include in the combination; some peculiar cause which mitigated in it the evils of workhouse education; conflicting interests, real or imaginary; the sort of esprit de corps which renders the inhabitants of one union particularly disinclined to enter into an agreement with those of neighbouring unions; but, above all, a rooted distrust of any plan involving an immediate outlay.
For these reasons I am of opinion that the 7 & 8 Vict. cap. 101, and the 11 8f 12 Vict. cap. 82, under which the erection of a dis-
*Minutes, 1851-2, pp. 162, 163.
†Page 6.
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trict school is practically dependent upon the written consent of a majority of the guardians, will, except under favourable circumstances of rare occurrence, remain inoperative. And if this should be the case only for a few years, I fear that the difficulty of obtaining the requisite assent will be considerably increased, as the capital which the unions will have expended in the improvement of school-rooms and of teachers' apartments, in new dormitories, and other things connected with the children, will still further rivet the school to the workhouse. As instances of this I will only cite the St. Faith's workhouse union, in which new apartments have been built for the teachers; the almost new workhouse of the Leicester union; and the entirely new ones of the Aylsham and Erpingham unions, and of the parish of Birmingham; in all of which ample provision has been made for the accommodation and education of the children.
And from that of Mr. Ruddock, of 1850:*
The reports of my colleagues and of myself in previous years have amply detailed the existing deficiencies, and we have hoped that the gradual adoption of the system of district schools might ere this have begun to work a cure; a longer experience, however, has convinced that a permissive enactment only is inadequate for the purpose: various reasons combine to render the guardians in agricultural unions averse to the proposal; jealousy of neighbouring unions - the fear of the expense of the first outlay - unwillingness to remove so large an item of union expenditure as the children from the precincts of the union - and in some cases a morbid dread of what is termed over-education - operate singly or conjointly to prevent the general adoption of the proposal.
The following passage, from Mr. Bowyer's Report of 1852, shows how the second of these obstacles, the veto conceded to the parents and guardians, operates:†
From what I know of agricultural guardians and agricultural paupers, especially the women, I am strongly inclined to think that the former will in every instance scrupulously and distinctly warn the parent or guardian of the child of the right of refusal which the law confers, and that this right will, in almost every instance, be exercised. Thus the advantages of the district school will be, practically, confined to orphans and deserted children; and the large class of illegitimate children, with mothers in the house, who, from the very fact of their being neither orphans nor deserted, but exposed to the corruption of their vicious origin, are in greatest need of the influence of a purer moral atmosphere, and of a sound religious, intellectual, and industrial education, will be excluded from these benefits and left to fester in the workhouse; and they will even be in a worse condition than they are at present, as the workhouse schools, which, chiefly on their account, it may often be necessary to keep up, will be even more inefficient than they are at present.
We should have been prepared to recommend that the powers given to the Poor Law Board should be not merely
*Minutes, 1851-2, p. 89.
†Minutes, 1852-3, pp. 90-93.
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permissive, but imperative, under certain defined circumstances; but we are informed that the enactments have failed of success, not from any want of inclination or endeavours on the part of that Board to give them effect, but from the prohibitory powers still remaining with the guardians. The removal of these, therefore, is the amendment which it is necessary to make.
A substitute, however, and as far as it goes, an effectual substitute, for district schools has been found in the establishment of separate schools, that is, of schools at a distance from the workhouse, erected by a union for its own purposes, supported by its own rates, and governed by its own officers. Of these schools, which appear to be as well managed and as successful as the district schools, there were, on the 25th of March 1859, 19, attended by 4,381 scholars, making with the 2,682 children in the district schools, 7,063, leaving 37,545 in the workhouses.
The following report of 'Mr. Tufnell on the Stepney separate school is, happily, only a sample of the success of those institutions:
The following statement will show the number of admissions and discharges during the past five years, as also the number sent to sea and land service:
It appears by the above table, that this school has, during the last five years, educated and sent to situations 229 boys. The best test 1 know of the goodness of the education imparted in the school is, to see how these boys conduct themselves when turned into the world. The inquiry has been made, and the result is, that of the 229, four are returned to the establishment; three are in the adult workhouse, one of whom went there owing to an accident; four have died; two having committed crime are now in reformatory schools; and 216 are in situations, doing well.
Now, considering that these boys mostly came from the lowest grade of the population, that many of them have been reared amidst the vilest haunts of vice in one of the worst districts of London; that only two of them, less than one per cent, should have been convicted of crime, must be deemed a remarkable testimony to the excellence of the school that has instructed them. But I was especially desirous of discovering how it came to pass that these two boys fell into crime,
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and pursuing my inquiries, I found, as is too often the case in this class of life, that their fall was owing to parental influence.
The following is a brief history of the two cases. The first lad was two and a half years in the establishment, and left to go to the sea-service. No sooner was he bound as an apprentice (after he had been a trial voyage) than, by his mother's influence, he was induced to leave his ship clandestinely. His mother then obtained from him his sea-clothing and pledged it. The boy then, idling away his time, soon fell into crime, was convicted for stealing, and sent to Red Hill Reformatory School, where he remained eighteen months. He conducted himself well there, and is now on his way to Australia, likely, I am informed, to become a useful and respectable member of society. His wretched mother was subsequently convicted for causing the death of her step-child, and is now undergoing the merited sentence of transportation for life.
The second case is somewhat similar. This lad also was bound to the sea-service, and having faithfully served twelve months of his apprenticeship, was advised by his relations to run away from his ship. He subsequently soon became dishonest, was convicted, and is now in a reformatory school.
One of the strongest arguments that has been always used in favour of district pauper schools is, that they tend to withdraw children from parental influence, which in this rank of life is too often injurious. These two cases bear strong testimony to the soundness of the argument, and it is corroborated by the fact, that no orphan child sent into the world from this large school has ever been known to misconduct himself. On my last visit to the school, a case very similar to the above was on the point of occurring. A boy had been fitted out for sea, when his mother induced him to desert, pawned his clothes, and sent him adrift. He was fortunately discovered by the relieving officer, kindly fitted out a second time by the guardians, and sent to sea, far away, it is to be hoped, from his unnatural parent.
The schoolmaster of this establishment writes to me in the following terms with reference to this topic:
"During a period of eight years I have made it my study to observe the baneful effects produced upon the child by parental influence. I believe the most effectual means of regenerating the pauper class is to separate the children entirely from adults. An opportunity is then afforded to teach the child to provide for itself in after-life, and of rising in the social scale. This can be clearly seen by those who watch the marked difference between the orphan pauper children and those who have parents, showing them, as they usually do by their own example, the most degraded of society."
This reference to orphanage puts in a striking point of view the benefits conferred on the community by these schools. Orphan children of the pauper class, if they are not sent to such schools, are almost sure to become criminals; if they are sent, they turn out the best conducted and most hopeful of the pupils. So certain am I of this that I am in the habit of urging, that none but orphan children should be appointed as pupil-teachers, knowing that the greatest dependence can be placed on their good behaviour. Three pupil-teachers so selected, who were under the disadvantage of having only completed the fourth year of their apprenticeship, competed for Queen's scholarships last Christmas, and two of them succeeded in gaining first-class scholarships, against a formidable competition. Where these might have been, were it not for the pauper schools, we know from reference to the Parkhurst Reformatory Reports, where sixty per cent of the
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juvenile criminals are orphans. The Poor Law Returns show that the same proportion, sixty per cent, of the pauper children are orphans or deserted; and hence it is clear, that the pauper schools offer us the choice, according as we neglect or encourage them, of training honest and industrious members of society, or of increasing the juvenile criminals sixty per cent.
It will be observed that there are more than three times as many separate schools as there are district schools, and that they contain nearly twice as many children. This difference arises partly from the separate schools being free from the restrictions imposed by the District School Acts, and partly from the absence of jealousy between unions. No concurrence with another union is necessary to the establishment of a separate school, the expenditure is not limited to a fifth of the annual poor rate, the parents have not a right to object to their children being sent thither.
The separate school ought to be at a distance, and no doubt the great success of those which have been established by the metropolitan and the northern unions arises in a great measure from their distance from the workhouse, and from the friends and relations of the children.
This is well shown by Mr. Tufnell, in his evidence.
3239. You say that 60 per cent of the children in district schools are orphans and deserted children? - Yes.
3240. And you find that they almost invariably turn out well? - Yes, they are by far the best of all the children in the establishment.
3241. Do you think that they turn out as well as the children of independent labourers? - Yes; I should say quite as well, and perhaps better.
3242. So that the loss of parental affection does not appear to do them injury in subsequent life? - No.
3243. (Rev. W. Rogers.) It is very difficult to prove that? - It is difficult to prove that; but I know from inquiries which I have made that there is a very small proportion of the orphan children who ever go wrong, and I know that when a child has gone wrong after having got into a place, in most cases I have been able to trace his fall to his parent getting hold of him.
One objection has been made to district and separate schools, which deserves attention, not because it is forcible, but because it is frequent. We extract Mr. Tufnell's answer.
3147. Do you consider that there has hitherto been any practical evil in giving to the children of paupers so great an advantage over the children of the industrious labourer who has kept out of pauperism? - In my view the theory of giving instruction in these schools is to restrict it to such an amount as that the child when he goes into the world shall never be a pauper again. If we do not instruct these children at all, they, as I know from other cases, turn into thieves, or paupers, or prostitutes; but I always want to bring them to the point in this instruction, that when they once get out in the world they shall have a trade and the power of supporting themselves, and never
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come to the parish again. I do not think that you can make that certain with less appliances than v/e have at present, though I have no doubt that in many of these schools we instruct the paupers to a higher extent than is done in ordinary schools; but it is almost impossible that we should not do it, for this reason, that in ordinary schools they get out at the age of 10 or 11, while we cannot get them out before they are 14, because they are most of them utterly friendless, orphans, and deserted, and therefore their instruction goes on to a much later period. If a pauper child were turned out of school at the age of 14, with no more intellectual and industrial knowledge than is usually obtained by a labourer's child when he leaves school, as he usually does at 12, or sooner, the chances are that such a child would become either a pauper or a criminal. It should be remembered, that this class of children are either utterly friendless, or what is worse, have such friends and relations whom it is better they should avoid. Hence the necessity, both as a measure of humanity and economy, of giving them such a moral and industrial education as shall enable them to earn an independent livelihood without that parental aid which an honest labourer's child can count upon.
3148. Admitting the great advantage to the pauper children themselves, does your experience lead you to think that the system has any evil moral effect upon those who are the nearest to the pauper class, and who have of course thereby a temptation offered to them to come within the pauper class so as to obtain for their children the advantage which you give to the paupers? - No; I do not believe that there is any foundation whatever for that apprehension; in fact I may say that I am quite certain there is not any foundation for it, because there are vast numbers of children running about London whom we should be very happy to have in the pauper schools, but who will not come because they dislike the discipline of them, and it is very rarely that the parent of a child in the lowest class has any idea of the prospective benefits of education.
3153. Speaking of the general run of pauper children, you would not think it at all desirable to give them an education which placed them above the children of poor parents? - No; if I could hit the exact point, I should wish just to go the length of preventing their ever becoming paupers again. In going to that point it is impossible not inadvertently to go beyond it; but it is exceedingly important not to fall below it because a child perhaps becomes a burthen to his parish to the extent of £300 or £400 before he dies, if you do not instruct him at all, or he may become a thief, and may burthen the country to ten times that sum before he dies; and I know from other sources that such is the effect on many of the children of this class who do not enter these schools, because I have inquired minutely into the condition of the children in Parkhurst Prison, and I find there that the proportion of orphan children and deserted children is exactly the same as we have in the workhouses.
3154. You think that giving them a good and careful education tends indirectly very largely to diminish pauperism? - Yes; and it is very economical to the country in that way.
3155. (Mr. Senior.) Therefore a district school, whatever it may cost, is an actual saving of expense? - A very great saving of expense, I believe. I believe that the pauperism of London in the last few years has been very much diminished by the effect of these district schools. It is perfectly well established, that pauperism has a tendency to run in families, adult paupers rearing pauper children, and thus the vice of dependence on the rates becomes hereditary. The good education
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given in these district schools absolutely stops this hereditary pauperism, and I have no doubt also diminishes crime, by educating children out of their vicious propensities. It is well known the larger proportion of criminals have been orphans early in life, and yet the orphan class is precisely that which turn out best in district schools. Thus, if you do not educate them they become thieves and paupers; if you do, they become well conducted productive workpeople.
3156. (Rev. W. C. Lake.) And, conversely, the bad state of the ordinary workhouse schools you think, perhaps, causes a great increase of expense and tends to increase pauperism? - Certainly; I have no doubt about it.
The evidence given in this and the preceding section appears to us to establish the proposition that the education of pauper children ought to be conducted in district or separate schools according to the circumstances of different unions. District schools would probably be most suitable for unions too small to supply children enough to fill a separate school. In large towns, on the other hand, separate schools would be usually more convenient, though district schools may often be very successful. We are, however, of opinion that the circumstances of workhouses are seldom such that they can be proper places for the education of chi
