drawing only. Until they shall have done so, they will derive no pecuniary benefit on account of their apprentices from the Minute of 26 January 1854. The whole of the exercises in drawing from each school should be filed loosely together with a piece of silk twist through the left-hand upper corner, folded evenly in half, and placed in the same envelope with, but not attached to, the rest of your report. You are not required to review, but simply to authenticate by your signature, the exercises in drawing. You will act upon your own discretion in declining to forward such exercises as are plainly destitute of merit. Not less than three quarters of an hour, nor more than one hour, should be allowed for working this exercise. In cases where candidates are to be examined in drawing, you will learn by experience how the requisite arrangement may best be made. In some cases you will yourself be able to arrive an hour earlier, or stay an hour later, than the ordinary inspection of the school would otherwise require; or, again, as at collective examinations, you may require the candidates in drawing to arrive, or to remain, before or after the hour fixed for the rest. You will meet the wishes of the Committee of Council in the administration of this Minute in proportion as, giving due effect to it, you do not reduce the number of schools which you are expected to visit. The chief waste of time is likely to arise from candidates who have not had the opportunity of becoming so far proficient as to justify examination. I am therefore to refer you again to the preceding paragraphs on this subject, and to beg that you will interpret them strictly. For some time to come you will probably not find much to do pursuant to these instructions (except in a few of the larger towns), beyond making them known from school to school; and so much I am to request that you will be careful to effect. Twenty-five copies of the Minute are herewith enclosed for the purpose. I have the honor to be, &c. To Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. (Signed) R. R. W. LINGEN. (No. 2.) Reply to an Inquiry as to Examination in Latin. REVEREND SIR, Committee of Council on Education, Council Office, Downing Street, 10 October 1854. In reply to your letter of the 28th ultimo, inquiring whether the Latin exastudents of the second year who elect to be examined in Latin, instead of the mination. Higher Mathematics, will be tried in passages taken from certain specified authors, I am instructed to state that the authors will not be specified. The Latin exercise, being accepted in lieu of one which goes to a consider able extent in mathematics, ought to be of a searching character. The passages will not be selected with a view to Roman history or antiquities, but with a view to ascertain whether the candidates can construe (in the full sense of that term) ordinary Latin sentences. You will see from Mr. Moseley's letter that the examination in this instance is intended to turn upon language. The grammar and the dictionary, therefore, will furnish answers to all that will be asked upon these papers. The questions will not extend so far as paragraph 3 under the head of English grammar and composition for the same year.† The object is to familiarize the student with the structure of a second language. A few chapters of prose, and a few hundred lines of verse,should be read with this sole object, from some classic, by the students who take the Latin exercise. * Supra, p. 16. I have the honor to be, &c. R. R. W. LINGEN. (Signed) ↑ Supra, p. 20. Industrial training. (No. 3.) Circular Letter to Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, as to Grants to Schools of Industry. SIR, Committee of Council on Education, Council Office, You are aware that my Lords have defined two classes of Industrial : 1. Appendages to common elementary schools, and, 2. Substantive establishments in which labour is the first consideration. Schools of the second of these classes are commonly organized under a schoolmaster, more or less of the ordinary kind, with one or more workmen under him, who are specially charged with the labour of the boys. The same remarks apply, mutatis mutandis, to girls. My Lords are frequently asked by the managers, on receiving the grant of 10s. per scholar, whether they must appropriate the sum to the industrial instructors, exclusively of the superintendent, and in addition to their stipulated salaries; or whether they must include the superintendent in such distribution; or whether, lastly, they may appropriate the sum at their own discretion in support of the school. With regard to the superintendent's claims, my Lords have decided (Minutes of 1853–4, Vol. I., p. 59), that he must fall under the ordinary rules concerning augmentation of salary. If, therefore, he be not certificated, my Lords do not interfere to appropriate any payment to his benefit. With regard to the workmen, my Lords would not make the grant of 10s. per head on account of any school in which such instructors were not retained in addition to the superintendent. Their presence is required to constitute the industrial character which the school must bear. Their Lordships do not, however, require that the grant shall be appropriated as an augmentation to the salaries of these workmen. The grant of 10s. per head has been calculated, as you will see from the passage last quoted in the Minutes of 1852-3, on the principle of allowing nearly the same amount of annual support to industrial as to other schools. The greater costliness of industrial schools (arising under the head of clothes, food, or lodging) constitutes a charge which my Lords do not see fit to admit upon the fund voted for education. Regarded as places of instruction, these schools are aided to an equal extent with the rest. The payment of 10s. per scholar belongs to the managers as part of the general funds of the school, and it rests with them to dispose of it at their discretion. It would generally be a good plan to give the superintendent and instructors a direct interest in obtaining the Governinent grant, as (for instance) by stipulating with them for certain salaries, to be increased by five or ten per cent. provided the grant be obtained. With regard to the last paragraph in the Circular of 26 August 1850 (as. now printed in Minutes of 1853-4, Vol. I., p. 57), the grant of 2s. 6d. per scholar contemplates those cases in which the master or mistress of a common elementary school (without other assistance) manages an industrial class, and the money is paid, like the gratuity for instructing pupil-teachers, or like the augmentation, in the teacher's own name. On the other hand, the grant of 5s., though still applying to common elementary schools, contemplates a more fully developed and independent plan of industrial teaching, and is paid, like the grant of 10s. herein-before considered, or like the capitation fee under the Minute of 2 April 1853, to the managers, for them to apply at their own discretion. I have the honor to be, &c. To Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, &c. (No. 4.) Letter inquiring as to Assistance to be expected towards establishing Schools of Industry. Torquay, 6 June 1854. SIR, BEING much interested in the subject of industrial training, and Industrial desirous of introducing the system into the schools of the parish where I training. reside, I take the liberty of requesting information from you in the matter. The points on which I shall solicit your reply are these: 1. Whether their Lordships' have reason to approve of a mixed system of education in agricultural parishes, i.e., instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic during part of the day, the remainder being devoted to training the boys for their future career as labourers, having under cultivation a sufficient portion of land to be more or less remunerative, and whether you can refer me to instances where the system has been attended with a visible improvement in the skill of agricultural labourers, and the general condition of the parish where it has been tried. 2. Whether their Lordships would sanction any and what grant towards the establishment of such a school, for the purchase of tools, &c., beforehand, and if so, to what set of regulations the school would be amenable, and to what precise amount of Government inspection and control. 3. In addition, I shall feel thankful by being informed what plan of education on the whole their Lordships have found reason to consider most practically useful in country parishes, or in other words which has been proved most conducive to fit children for the due performance of the duties of their future lives. Of the justness of the abstract principle of industrial training I cannot allow myself to entertain a doubt, but there may be, and probably are, practical difficulties in the way which it is impossible for an inexperienced person to foresee. I shall feel obliged for any reference you can give me to the reports of their Lordships' Inspectors, or other documents which bear upon the subject. SIR, * Committee of Council on Education, Council Office,, Downing Street, 10 June 1854. ADVERTING to your letter of the 6th instant, I am directed to request your attention to the reports in the enclosed volume of the Minutes of 1852-3, and particularly to the reports by the Rev. H. W. Bellairs and the Rev. J. P. Norris. I am also to bring under your notice the enclosed Circular* to Her Majesty's Inspector, and the form of report annexed thereto. The whole question is ably discussed, under all its aspects, by Mr. Moseley, in the volume for 1848-49-50, and my Lords incline to think that a rural system of half-time, such as he indicates at page 13, is the most promising of ultimate success. Their Lordships are not able to point to any considerable experiments of this plan at present (the course hitherto followed having been rather in the direction of appending field-gardens to common schools), but their Lordships * Minutes of 1853–4, vol. i., p. 57. have just submitted a Minute to Parliament, for the encouragement of a halftime system in the rural districts, by accepting 88 instead of 176 days of attendance, under the Minute of 2 April 1853, in the case of boys over ten years of age, who shall attend at school and at work according to such intervals as my Lords may, in each case, approve.* I have the honor to be, &c. (Signed) R. R. W. LINGEN. The Hon. W. W. Addington, Up Ottery, near Honiton. (No. 5.) Circular Letter to Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, as to their Reports Applications for Retiring Pensions. Committee of Council on Education, Council Office, SIR, As to report- I AM to request that, in reporting upon applications for retiring pening on appli- sions, you will be careful to inform my Lords of the particular circumstances cations for retiring penwhich justify an expectation that the school will be efficiently maintained after sions. the removal of the teacher for whom a pension is sought. The engagement at the bottom of p. 3, in the enclosed formt, appears to have been signed, in several instances, with very little attention to its meaning. I may mention that in one case this engagement was signed without comment, although the available income of the school was returned (a little higher up in the same paper) as 181. 13s. 9d. per annum. In others the Inspector's report upon the school, in some contemporary document, often furnishes an immediate contradiction. The points on which my Lords desire to have the specific opinion of Her Majesty's Inspector, in the pension report, are (as has been already stated in the Minutes of 1853-4, Vol. I., p. 59) : 1. Whether the teacher now incapacitated has rendered such good service in school as, all things considered, deserves some public acknowledgment on his or her removal. It is peculiarly difficult to decide satisfactorily upon reports which give a favourable impression of general character, but leave it doubtful whether the applicant was ever fit to be a teacher. Considering that the number of these pensions is limited (Minutes, 1851-2, Vol. I., p. 25), and that the required years of service under inspection are coming to be fulfilled in a constantly increasing number of schools, it becomes of much importance not to admit upon the list cases which may, at no distant time, serve only to exclude others of superior merit. My Lords will ordinarily refuse pensions in those cases where the Inspector does not report any positive degree of professional merit. 2. Whether the school shows any trustworthy promise of becoming efficient. If Her Majesty's Inspectors regard their power of recommendation as strictly limited by their instructions to these two considerations, they will be relieved from the embarrassment which any opening for mere charity cannot fail to create in the discharge of this public duty. Under the first head, the judgment should be charitable, but it should not rest upon charity alone. * Minutes of 1853-4, vol. i., p. 57. † Minutes of 1851-2, vol. i., p. 30 (latter part of Certificate). Under the second head, the materials of a favorable judgment should be rigorously scrutinized before it is recorded in the pension report. You will do well to bear in mind, and to inform the managers of schools, that, after a pension has been awarded, an annual report will be called for from Her Majesty's Inspector, before each instalment of the pension is paid. In most instances the school is under inspection with reference to some other annual grant, but, if this be not so, it is assigned to a particular month in the Inspector's list, with reference to the pension only, which is liable to be withdrawn if either of the conditions on which it has been granted fail. The pensioned teacher is regarded in the same light as the teacher in receipt of augmentation, viz., as one of the means of securing an efficient school. The difficulty which has been experienced in deciding upon several recent cases, induces my Lords to desire your particular attention to these instructions. I have the honor to be, &c. To Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, &c. R. R. W. LINGEN. (No. 6.) Extract from Letter of Instructions, dated 6 December 1854, to Her Majesty's Ir is probable that, in many instances, the number of candidates attending Prevention will render it impossible to leave so much space between the writers as is of collusion desirable. between candidates examina I am to request that you will peruse the Minutes of 1851-2, Vol. I., at collective pages 112-124, and that, on the first occasion of meeting the candidates, you will explain the purport of that correspondence, dwelling on the fact that the penalty applies equally to those who give or receive clandestine assistance. My Lords have received information which leads them to think that instances of copying and of unfair assistance (by the introduction of books, and by application to other candidates), during the examinations for certificates of merit, have not been so uncommon as they would willingly have supposed. You will be careful, therefore, not to announce at the end of each sitting what is to be the next paper, and you will state, in addition to the caution which you have already been directed to communicate, that proved complicity, of any kind or degree whatever, in dishonest conduct of this description, will be visited with the same penalty as the direct form of the offence. You should call upon the candidates to co-operate with you in exposing any such instances of fraud. You will also be good enough to explain that, as all the papers on the same subject are read over together, there is little or no chance that delinquency of this kind will escape detection. You will, at the end of the examination, transmit a list of the names in the order of sitting. Such a list is often wanted in deciding upon cases of copying. This also you should explain. The penalty (three years exclusion from any recognition by the Committee of Council) will be inflicted with the same uniformity as heretofore. It has never yet, in a single instance, been waived or remitted; nor will it be so in such cases as may for the future occur. To Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, &c. (Signed) R. R. W. LINGEN, |