Employment of pupil teachers on Sundays. (No. 7.) Replies to Inquiries as to Employment of Pupil-Teachers on Sundays. REVEREND SIR, (a.) Committee of Council on Education, Council Office, As the managers are parties to the indentures, it is presumed that the regulations of the school will not be inconsistent with the spirit of any of the provisoes contained in the indentures. My Lords do not consider that it rests with them to decide more specifically upon the question proposed in your letter. It is generally part of a master's office in schools connected with the Church of England to conduct a Sunday school. It is not unreasonable, therefore, that apprentices in such schools should practise this part of their future duties. At the same time their employment ought not to be made an exception to the Sunday's rest, and therefore it would be advisable to divide, as far as possible, the hours of duty on that day among them. I have the honor to be, &c. REVEREND SIR, (b.) Committee of Council on Education, Council Office, In reply to your letter of the 26th ultimo, my Lords can only state that pupil-teachers must comply with the general rules of the schools in which they are apprenticed. My Lords are not aware that Sunday forms any exception to this general principle. At the same time my Lords would be sorry to find that any teacher's or apprentice's duties on that day were such as to deprive him of the rest enjoyed by other workers. The point now at issue is not one on which my Lords would be disposed to interfere between the managers and the apprentices. The managers have power to refuse the certificates on which payment of the annual stipends depend, or to terminate the engagement under the last clause in the inden ture. In deciding upon the apprenticeship of new candidates, my Lords might be influenced by the recollection that such disputes had been prosecuted to extremity. REVEREND SIR, (c.) Committee of Council on Education, Council Office, Downing Street, 27 October 1854. PUPIL-TEACHERS are subject, like other scholars, to the regulations of the school in which they are apprenticed. It is a common practice in schools connected with the Church of England to form the choir from among the scholars, and for the parochial clergyman to direct all the proceedings of the school on Sundays. It is undoubtedly for the interest of the pupil-teachers that they should acquire a practical knowledge of Church music; for it is often made a con dition of engaging a schoolmaster that he shall be able to superintend the formation of a choir, and to guide it in performing the Services. My Lords have not before them any copy of the trusts or rules under which the school of is managed, but, judging from other instances, it appears to be a question entirely within the limits of your own discretion to decide whether the pupil-teachers of your school shall sing in the choir, and under whose guidance. I have the honor to be, &c. R. R. W. LINGEN. (No. 8.) Inquiry as to Rule for finding Average Attendance (Minutes of 1853-4, Vol. I., p. 18, note *). South Kilworth National School. of attendance. 17 January 1855. HAVING adopted the new style of school registers, as recommended Registration in the Minutes of 1853-4, I find it stated in the said volume, page 18, that, in order to find the weekly average attendance, the totals of all the columns (morning and afternoon) should be added up, and then divided by ten, while, in the separate copy of the Minute of 2 April 1853, which I received some time since, the direction given is to divide by two. As this will make a material alteration in the returns in the registers, may I beg the favor of an explanation. SIR, that, Extract from Reply to foregoing Inquiry. South Kilworth National School. Committee of Council on Education, Council Office I AM directed to inform you, in reply to your letter of the 17th instant, Rule for 1. The difference to which you advert in the rule for finding the average attendance is apparent only. The rule as first printed (two being the divisor) was confined to indicating that each day's attendance was denoted by half (not the whole) of the sum of its two columns; e.g., morning attendance, 100; afternoon attendance, 88; day's attendance,-2)188(94. The rule did not go on to specify the rest of the process, viz., that, if an average of five such days (one school week) has to be ascertained, the sum of the attendances must be further divided by five. The rule is better stated, therefore, by making ten the divisor at once instead of two and five separately. ** I have the honor to be, &c. (Signed) R. R. W. LINGEN. finding ave rage attendance. SIR, (No. 9.) Letter relating to Selection of Training School by Queen's Scholar. Chester, 29 January 1855. ALLOW me to ask whether my Lords would discountenance the following case, by refusing to permit it?— A certain number of Queen's scholars have written to me that it is their intention to come to this training school. Upon Saturday, without any reason assigned, I am informed by letter that -, of the National school, does not intend to act up to his written promise, but is going to some other training school. It seems to me that these youths should be taught that their pledged word is or ought to be law, and that, inasmuch as the training school bound itself to receive each Queen's scholar whose name was directed to be entered, so also the Queen's scholar is bound by the same claims of honour and integrity. I name the case, not for the sake of a Queen's scholar more or less in this or any other training school, but, because thus in early life teaching youths to set so lightly by truth, and easily, and without even the expression-much less the feeling-of regret, to disregard their written, or even spoken word, cannot be otherwise than injurious to all right principle. With my Lords alone rests the remedy, by refusing to sanction this Queen's scholar at any other training school, or the encouragement, by tacitly overlooking what appears to me to be a serious offence. Committee of Council on Education, Council Office, Downing Street, 5 February 1855. ADVERTING to your letter of the 29th ultimo, I am directed to request your attention to the passage marked in the enclosed copy of the Minute of 25 July 1850, and to Sections 1 and 10 in the Minute of 20 August 1853.† In the interval between those two minutes, the number of Queen's scholars being limited, the practice was that a pupil-teacher, in selecting the college where he would sit for examination, thereby practically selected the college at which he would enter as a Queen's scholar if he succeeded. The Queen's scholarship answered, in fact, to an open college scholarship at one of the Universities. This system was intended to have the effect of giving an option, to each pupil-teacher, either of encountering greater competition at one of the temporarily popular colleges, or of getting in more easily at another. Mr. Moseley, however, continued to press upon the attention of the Committee of Council that the rule worked so as to let in a class of Queen's scholars at some colleges inferior to those who failed at others, and that, in this way a number of promising youths were annually lost to the profession. Accordingly, when the restriction upon the number of Queen's scholars was removed, the examination at the same time was deprived of its official * Minutes of 1850-1, vol. i., p. xviii. "On the selection of one training school rather than another, their Lordships must wholly decline to offer any advice, suggestion, or opinion whatever, to the friends and patrons of apprentices." † Supra, p. 10 and p. 12. connexion with any particular college. The pupil-teacher nominated as a Queen's scholar is now nominated at large, and not as a Queen's scholar of (e.g.) Chester. Under these circumstances, my Lords must leave the authorities of each college to settle with the pupil-teachers or their friends the terms on which they will allow candidates for Queen's scholarships to attend; and, although my Lords would visit any positive fraud or deception with their displeasure, they cannot interfere with common changes of intention.* The Rev. A. Rigg, I have the honor to be, &c. (Signed) R. R. W. LINGEN. Principal of the Chester Diocesan Training School, &c. A copy of this correspondence was sent to the managers of the school from which the candidate had come, and they were requested to obtain an apology from him, if they thought he had behaved ill. |