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ment grants. Supporters of separate schools are exempt from taxation for support of the regular public schools.

The instruction in elementary schools is completed in five forms. of two years each, although this does not mean necessarily that all the children must remain in the school 10 years. The fifth form is practically the same as the first two years of the high school, and only in comparatively few schools do pupils go beyond form four, which corresponds to the seventh and eighth grades in schools in the United States. In Ontario the time element is somewhat subordinated to a system of examinations. Whether a pupil remains in school 10 years or less really depends on the type of secondary or higher school he is aiming for and his aptness and ability. The system of examinations will be considered elsewhere.

SECONDARY EDUCATION.

The classes of schools which offer secondary education are three in number: Continuation schools, high schools, and collegiate institutes. In the United States these schools would be considered only as high schools of varying degrees of equipment and facilities for work. In Ontario, however, this is hardly the case, since each was originally established under separate legislative enactment for its own specific purpose. It is true that of late years the three schools have begun to resemble one another more and more and differ now chiefly in name and intensity of work.

The continuation schools.-This class of secondary school was founded to answer the demands from many rural communities and villages for additional school facilities above the elementary grades. In the United States they would be classed as rural high schools.

Such a school may be organized in a single school section or by the union of two or more school sections (the Canadian term for the American school district); they may be established within any township which does not already comprise a high-school district-here they would be similar to the American township high schools; a village may be organized as a continuation school district, to which the county council can, if it finds it advisable, annex certain rural territory; finally, the county council may take the initiative and "establish in any township, town, or village in the county one or more continuation schools, each of which shall have a staff of at least two teachers engaged for their whole time."1

These schools must not be confused with advanced departments in the public elementary schools as they exist in the United States. Although they may be under the ordinary public school board, they are usually distinct schools under their own boards of trustees and are maintained in buildings separate from the elementary schools.

19 Edw. VII, ch. 90.

The schools are maintained in part by the local district (union section), in part by pupils' fees, and in part by the township or townships which they serve. The minister of education also pays into the school treasury a certain annual grant from the legislative appropriations, which sum shall at least be duplicated by the county council. The kind and amount of school work which can be pursued in a continuation school depends chiefly upon the number of instructors on the teaching staff. The highest grade school must have the full time of at least three well qualified instructors; the lowest grade must have at least the equivalent of the full time of more than one instructor, but less than that of two.

The standard Ontario secondary school embraces a time limit of six years, divided respectively into the lower school, the middle. school, and the upper school, each nominally of two years.

The work of the continuation schools is, in the main, limited to general courses in the lower and middle schools.

There are at this time in Ontario 125 continuation schools, with a a teaching staff of 218. The highest salaries paid the principals and male and female assistants for the past year are, respectively, $1,800, $1,400, and $900; the average salaries paid the same positions are $1,082, $917, and $732.

High schools and collegiate institutes.-High schools are established in the larger villages, towns, and cities of the Province. They draw their maintenance from local and county taxes, from pupils' fees, and from general and special legislative grants apportioned by the minister of education.

- All high schools established since 1891 must have a principal and at least two assistants. Government aid is withheld from any high school that does not provide an initial equipment of at least the following value: Library, $300; scientific apparatus, $300; maps, charts, and globes, etc., $50; and art models, $50. The legislative aid is distributed as a fixed annual grant, ranging from $350 to $375, and as an award for good school equipment and housing accommodations, being not to exceed $260 for equipment or $120 for accommodations. There is also an additional special legislative grant ranging from $40 to $120 annually. In this way the Ontario government offers its awards of merit to appreciative school communities.

Any high school may be advanced to the rank of collegiate institute whenever it complies with the government regulations for the establishment of such schools, which require a larger teaching staff, with specialists in charge of at least classics, mathematics, modern. history, and science, and additional accommodations and equipment. The high schools are divided into so-called lower, middle, and upper schools, nominally of two years each. There are two ways of gaining admission to the schools: (1) By taking the entrance examinations and (2) upon certificate of the public school principal.

Pupils of the public or separate schools may gain entrance by one or the other of these. The so-called junior high-school entrance examination entitles the candidate to a place in the lower school, and the senior high-school entrance examination admits to the middle school. The aim of the elementary and continuation schools is, in large measure, to prepare for these examinations, and much that is really worth while in school life, but which can not come within the scope of the examinations, is too frequently eliminated. This seems to the outsider a serious weakness in the Ontario school system.

Pupils may also gain entrance to the lower school upon certificate of the principal, showing that they have completed in a satisfactory manner the fourth form (eighth grade) of the elementary school.

The curriculum is similar to that in the American high schools of similar rank, and need not be included here.

There are in Ontario at this time 161 high schools and collegiate institutes, employing 970 teachers, of whom nearly 60 per cent are men. The highest salary paid by the collegiate institutes is $3,700; the average for principals is $2,155; and the average for all instructors, male and female, is $1,555. In the high schools one principal receives $6,000. This is for the technical high school in Toronto. The next highest salary is $3,100, the average for principals is $1,611, and the average for all is $1,252. Finally, the average salary for all the instructors in both high schools and collegiate institutes is $1,409, an increase for the past year of $51. These salaries can well bear comparison with what high-school teachers are paid in the United States.

In 1907 encouragement was given to the establishment of agricultural departments in one of the secondary schools in each county. Graduates of the agricultural college were appointed as county agricultural representatives, and it was proposed that they should also act as regular teachers in the agricultural departments of the high schools located in the towns where their offices were located. The county was required to vote a grant of $500 annually toward the support of the work while the Province provided the remainder of the funds required. This plan has not developed as it was thought it would, however; and owing to the fact that the county agricultural representatives are fully employed in field work other measures will be taken to secure the establishment of the high-school agricultural departments.

HIGHER EDUCATION.

The provincial university is located at Toronto. With its affiliated colleges it has a staff of 400 and more than 4,000 students. It maintains a faculty of education which prepares teachers for the secondary schools. Besides this, there are the University of Ottawa, at

Ottawa; Queen's University, at Kingston; McMaster University, at Toronto; and the Western University, at London, established under the auspices of the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Anglican Churches, respectively. Queen's University has a faculty of education also. All except the University of Ottawa are coeducational.

The Ontario Agricultural College, at Guelph, founded and endowed by the government, wields a powerful influence over the agricultural progress of the Province. More recently Macdonald Institute was established as a part of the agricultural college, being made possible through the generosity of Sir William Macdonald, of Montreal, a great friend of vocational education. The institute has been of incalculable value in instructing Ontario young people in the household arts and agriculture and in preparing teachers in these subjects for the rural and other schools.

Up to about 1900 teacher training was carried on in numerous so-called model schools and two normal schools. The model schools confined their instruction to the professional side of the work, since the students were already graduated from the high schools. With the organization of five new provincial normal schools the model schools were reduced and are now limited to about eight county schools, holding four months' sessions in the fall term and six summer model schools held in July for the special training of teachers for poor and backward districts. The department of education aims to eliminate, as far as possible, all "third-class teachers," as those from model schools are called, and to replace them by teachers holding professional second-class certificates obtained by a year's attendance at one of the seven normal schools. The faculties of education in Toronto and Queen's Universities (university teachers' colleges) furnish all the teachers of secondary schools as well as teachers holding professional first-class certificates required in some places for principalships of graded schools.

Further details of the work of the agricultural college and the teacher-training schools will be given in a later section.

SCHOOL INSPECTION.

Possibly the strongest link in the Ontario school system is the close professional inspection of the schools. All school inspection centers in the department of education; to it the inspectors are directly responsible and to it they may make their appeals for assistance when necessary.

The Province has, first of all, 90 public elementary school inspectors, who are chosen by the local county councils and ratified by the department of education. These professional educators are kept in office during life or good behavior. They are divided as county,

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district, and joint village and rural inspectors, as necessity may warrant. They are capable, well-educated men, who make a life profession of their work. There are also five separate school inspectors and five inspectors for English-French public and separate schools.

In addition to the above, there is a chief inspector of all public and separate schools; a director of industrial and technical education, who is also inspector of the normal schools; three high-school inspectors; two continuation-school inspectors; an inspector of manual training and technical education; and a director of elementary agricultural education.

III. RURAL SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION AND MAINTE

NANCE.

SCHOOL ORGANIZATION NOT SATISFACTORY.

The Ontario school section (district) is scarcely more satisfactory than is the small district unit now in use in 24 American States. There, as with us, it is proving too small to offer the people anything more than an elementary school taught by one teacher and occasionally a continuation school of two teachers. The best the small schools can do is to prepare the children for the lower school of some town high school or collegiate institute, and to give the big majority who never will attend any other school a taste of agriculture through school gardening and home projects.

It is only fair to state, at this juncture, that the average school section (district) in Old Ontario contains fully as large a number of children as one finds in the one-teacher school in the United States. According to law

No section shall be formed which contains less than 50 children between the ages of 5 and 21 years, whose parents and guardians are residents of the proposed section, unless such proposed section is more than 4 square miles in area, provided that a smaller area, although it contains a less number of such children, may be formed into a school section, where, because of lakes or other physical conditions, a section convenient for school purposes containing an area of more than 4 square miles can not be formed.

Ontario educators are beginning to realize, however, that there must be a vital reorganization in the whole system, looking toward centralization and consolidation before the rural school can take its place in the vanguard of rural transformation.

PLAN OF SCHOOL MAINTENANCE GOOD.

Under the Ontario system all the power of taxation is not left to the local board. It is generally conceded that such a thing would be unwise, since it might mean the control of this vital factor in the

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