Papers for the Schoolmaster.

No. XXIX.-NEW SERIES.

MAY 1ST, 1867.

MR. FRASER'S SCHEME.

At the close of a series of able and interesting letters to the Times, Mr. Fraser has submitted for public criticism, in the letter of April 20th, a scheme for the improvement of elementary Education. As it is due to Mr. Fraser's reputation to believe that a plan so well considered, and based on so wide an experience, will meet with the most careful attention, and will probably form for some time to come a field of controversy, we will here, by reprinting, put our readers in possession of his proposition.

"The local organization which I desire to use for the purposes of my scheme, is that which the new Poor Law has given to the country in the shape of Union districts (about 600 in number); and the recent change in the law which has extended the area of chargeability, in respect of the maintenance of the poor, from the parish to the Union, will operate favourably in respect of my plan for the maintenance of the School. The area of action we require must be wide enough to exclude local prejudices; narrow enough to include local sympathy.

"Each of these districts has for a corps d'administration its Board of elected and ex-officio Guardians; and out of this body I propose to form my local Committee or Board of Education, whose field of action would be the district comprised within the Union. The relations between the Council on Education in Downing Street and the local Boards of Education, would be analogous to the relations existing between the Poor Law Board and the Boards of Guardians.

"To the central office I reserve, absolutely and exclusively, the function of inspection, on the efficiency of which the success of the whole plan would turn; and the duty of paying out of the general taxation of the country the sum earned by the School, at a rate to be mentioned further on, on the results of examination conducted by their Inspector.*

"I relieve the central office, it will be seen presently, of all duty in relation to the building of Schools, which I conceive to be emphatically and properly a

"Some persons will throw up their hands at once at my scheme on finding me mad enough, as they will think me, after recent revelations, to intrust the local interests of Education to the tender mercies of a Board of Guardians. But I pray such impatient readers to bear with me a little longer till I have more fully developed my plan. They will find that I propose to give the local Board no control at all over the constitution and management of the Schools, the one of which I suppose to already exist or (in the case of new Schools) to be likely to be framed after existing models; while for the other I shall still trust to voluntary effort, which I am confident, when it is not asked to find all the money as well as all the labour, will always be forthcoming. The relations of the local Board to the School will be financial simply. Their duties, instead of being left to their own discretion and conception of them, will be rigorously defined by law, and as they will have to pay the money, willingly or not, they will have at least this motive prompting them to see that it is beneficially applied.

"Besides, I propose that this local Board, or Committee (by whichever name it should be called), should be composed of elected and ex-officio Guardians, in definite proportions, according to the number of each class in the particular Union district; and the ex-officio Guardians are almost¦ universally gentlemen of standing in the neighbourhood, who would bring to the Board a breadth of view and a liberality of sentiment that might be wanting in its other members.

"To this local Board, thus constituted, which I will assume to consist of twelve members and a chairman, elected out of the whole body of Guardians, three retiring by seniority every year, I would commit the duty of paying out of a rate, levied with the poor-rate on the Union district, and to be called the school-rate, a certain annual sum towards the maintenance of each registered School in the district, calculated on the average daily attendance of the children therein.

local affair. I would maintain its existing relations to the Normal or Training Schools, which, I think, had better be kept outside my present scheme, and left, as they mostly are now, in the hands of the Diocesan Boards, or the great Religious Societies. I think, however, that the abandoned plan of granting Queen's Scholarships might be revived with good effect. Plainly, some further attraction is wanted to fill our Training Schools-that is, to supply us with a competent body of teachers. Workhouse Schools would be brought into my scheme; Reformatory Schools and Schools for special purposes, such as Military and Naval Schools, left as they are. Ragged Schools, if the new scheme operated, could, so far as I can see, put in no claim for exceptional assistance, and, in fact, would cease to form a separate class. I should also add that I suppose the Revised Code to be retained, except so far as it would be modified in detail by some of the features of the proposed scheme.

"The Grant paid out of the general taxation might be 2s. 6d. for each pass in the several subjects of reading, writing, and ciphering, or 7s. 6d. for each child who satisfied the Inspector in all; the same sum (7s. 6d.) might be paid out of the local rate for each child in average daily attendance at the School. The balance of expenditure, ranging from 10s. to 15s. a child, would have to be provided out of the school-tees and voluntary contributions. As endowments were certainly intended by their founders to be a benefit to the neighbourhood in which they planted them, I think they ought to be dealt with on the principles of the Revised Code (Art. 93), to the relief of the local rate and local subscriptions, and only in case of a surplus to affect the amount of central aid.*

"I have said that the success-the economical and efficient workingof this plan would largely, and, indeed, principally, depend upon the Inspector. I believe that the success of most practical organizations ultimately depends upon the competency, integrity, governing or organizing power of some one man. Who, then, is to be our Inspector? and what are to be his duties?

"The Inspector is to be the servant of the central office, and responsible to it. This secures his independence. And yet, that he may not be indifferent to the wholesome stimulus or restraint of local feelings and opinions, I would have a county Committee on Education, elected by the Court of Quarter Sessions, to whom, equally with his more direct superiors, the Inspector should make his periodical Report, and through whom any complaint of neglect of duty or misconduct on his part, when made either by School Managers or local Boards, having been duly examined and substantiated, should pass, accompanied with such comments as might be thought desirable, to the Central Office. Such an intermediate body would protect both the Inspector and the Schools: the Inspector, from petty carping and frivolous charges; the Schools, from anything like serious injustice or culpable abuse of power: while to representations, proceeding from such a body, no doubt, at head quarters all proper attention would be paid.

"As to the type of Inspector which I should desire to see, I can conceive no improvement (exceptis excipiendis) on the class of gentlemen with whom we have been accustomed to deal. But, I think, that the force is capable of a very much better organization. By confining the inspection simply to the secular subjects of instruction (except on the

"I may say once for all, that the figures in this exposition are open to modification. They are the principles and leading features of the scheme on which I desire to fix the reader's mind. I think that all Endowed Schools should be required by law to submit to inspection, and to lay before the Inspector at his visit a properly vouched statement of accounts.

A

*

direct request of the Managers), we might get rid of that clumsy and intricate arrangement which brings two or three Inspectors on the same errand into the same neighbourhood. By limiting each Inspector's district simply to a single county, we can economize his travelling power, while we extend his influence by requiring him to visit every parish and every registered school.†

"For it is an essential part of my plan that every parish should be visited, in order that every labouring man's child in England should have within his reach a fairly efficient School. If an Inspector finds a parish either without a School or with insufficient school-accommodation, or with a School, by reason of the absence of local effort, inadequately maintained, he shall immediately report that fact to the local Board. If voluntary effort is still unable or unwilling to undertake the task, the Board shall have power, and shall be required to levy a special rate on that parish for the building or enlarging of the School-the cost of such building or enlargement not to exceed a certain fixed sum per child, calculated on the

*"The religious instruction of each School may safely be left in the hands of its managers; and in the case of Church of England Schools the inspection of them can be handed over to the Diocesan officer; or the Government Inspector can examine their condition, at the option of the managers. I would leave the matter open and free.

"It would not be necessary that all Inspectors should work alike, or all be paid alike. One Inspector, I imagine, would be found equal to a county of the size of Berks, with its (about) 180,000 inhabitants, 200 parishes, and 400 schools. If not he must be supplemented by an assistant, who, if there were not sufficient demand for his services in one, could work under two Inspectors in two adjacent counties. Counties like Middlesex, York, Lancaster, Devon, where either the population is very dense or the area very wide, would require several Inspectors, who would take each his own district. With such a disposition of the force, considerably more than five Schools,—(which I believe, is the present requirement) -could be inspected in a week. It is important to limit the Inspector to the county, by reason of his connection with the Committee on Education of the Court of Quarter Sessions. In some cases, as in my own, the Union district includes parishes in more than one county. The district should, then, be considered as belonging to that county in which the Union workhouse stands. I calculate that 25,000 Schools, which must be about our present number, would require 100 Inspectors: and I see no chance, within any limit of time about which we need concern ourselves, of the force requiring to be increased beyond 150. At an average salary of £500, with £250 for travelling and hotel expenses, the annual cost of 100 Inspectors would be £75,000; of 159, would not exceed £120,000. The inspection of Training Schools might be left to two Inspectors General, and though the local Inspectors might preside at the annual examinations for admission and certificates, the revising and marking of the papers might be left in the hands of the examiners in the Central Office. Inspectors, after a certain period of service, should have a claim to pensions; or, if clergy men, might be provided for out of the ecclesiastical patronage of the Chancellor or the Crown, which is at present distributed on no very defensible principle.

number of children likely to be in average daily attendance; or, where a School is inadequately maintained, and the voluntary subscriptions and schoolpence do not amount to 10s. per child on the average daily attendance, then the Board may and shall levy a rate on the property in that parish to make up the deficiency, allowing, however, voluntary subscribers to the funds of the School to deduct from their proportion of the rate the amount of their subscription.*

"I would abolish the requirement of a certificate in the teacher as the condition of a school's receipt of aid either from the Central Office or from the local Board; but the Inspector shall be required to satisfy himself that the methods of teaching are sound, and the discipline effective; and a failure in either of these two points shall render the School liable to a proportionate diminution in the amount of aid from both sources that it would otherwise be entitled to receive. In order to test the modes of teaching, the Inspector shall always require the principal teacher to give a lesson to a class in his presence on some easy subject, selected without previous notice by him.

"The accounts of the School vouched by the managers in a simple intelligible form which shall be the same for all Schools, shall be presented to the Inspector at his visit, and audited by him. The register also shall be examined and verified; and the Inspector, besides his Report to the Central Office, shall report to the local Board twice a year, in a simple tabular form, embracing all the Schools within the Union district, which he has examined in the preceding six months, the information requisite to enable them to make their grants to the respective Schools. The grants, whether central or local, should be paid to all Schools on the same days-say on the 15th of July and the 15th of January, according as their inspection falls, either in the first or second half-yearly division of the year. On the same principle, the School year of every School should terminate either on the 30th of June or the 31st of December. Simple uniform regulations of this kind would save much trouble and circumlocution in preparing accounts, making reports, and paying grants.†

* "It should be quite lawful for a small parish adjoining a larger, or for two small parishes together, to combine to support a central School. Also, as the parochial area of chargeabilty has been abolished, children may be allowed to attend any School that is most convenient to them within the Union. In cases where the locality of their homes suggested it, an arrangement (such as prevails in Massachusetts and Canada) might easily be made for their attending School in an adjoining Union. When a building rate has to be levied, it might be thrown, as for many other parochial purposes, over a fixed period of years, the money required being borrowed on the security of the rates in the meantime.

+"Evening Schools, mutatis mutandis, may be aided on the same principle, though not at the same rates, as Day Schools. The necessity of their organic