Elementary 
 
 Education 
 
 I^oBfRr GR£GORy D. 
 
 D£AA 
 
 V Of .j! r'AC/lS 
 
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION \ 
 
 .1 
 
 .i 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 LONDON 
 
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 SOME ACCOUNT OF 
 
 ITS RIS£ AND PROGRESS IN ENGLAND 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT GREGORY, D.D. 
 
 DEAN OF ST PAULS AND TREASURER OF THE NATIONAL SOCIETY 
 
 WITH APPENDIX 
 
 LONDON 
 
 National Society's Depository 
 
 BROAD SANCTUARY, WESTMINSTER 
 1905 
 
 [^ li r igh ts reserved^ 
 

 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/elementaryeducatOOgregrich 
 
PREFACE 
 
 At the request of some friends I have written the 
 following account of the manner in which Popular 
 Education in England has reached its present position. 
 I have undertaken this task for the information of those 
 who are interested in the subject, but who know little 
 about it, and not for those who are familiar with the 
 question, and who would naturally expect that it should 
 be treated much more in detail. Events that occurred 
 only a few years ago are apt to be forgotten in the whirl 
 and excitement that seem now to be our normal state 
 of existence ; and the very names of the men who have 
 done the most towards forming the somewhat compli- 
 cated system of popular education now existing have 
 almost passed into a state of oblivion. It is no un- 
 common thing to find people who imagine that little or 
 no attention was given to the provision of education for 
 the masses of our people until the Legislature passed 
 the Act of 1 870 ; and there are still more who refuse to 
 give the Church credit for the exertions and sacrifices of 
 
 214745 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 time and money made by her children at a much earlier 
 date. Having been connected with the National Society 
 as Treasurer for more than a quarter of a century, and 
 for several years longer as a member of its Committee, 
 I have necessarily had special opportunities of know- 
 ing the great work it has accomplished. So far back 
 as 1 87 1 I wrote some account of the Society, which 
 appeared in its Monthly Paper, and in 1883 I wrote 
 for the National Review an article on the work of 
 the Church of England during the present century 
 with respect to Elementary Education. Of both 
 these articles I have made free use in the following, 
 pages. My aim has been to place the subject before 
 those who care for it with as few technicalities as 
 possible. I have therefore sought to avoid details con- 
 cerning Codes and minor arrangements, and have 
 introduced any mention of them only so far as seemed 
 necessary to a correct understanding of the principles of 
 action that have been pursued. Wherever I was able, 
 I have taken the words of authoritative documents to 
 set forth what was done, rather than attempted to 
 describe changes or the principles on which they were 
 founded in my own words. I am painfully aware 
 that what I have written has no claim to notice as a 
 literary composition, but as a record of facts I believe 
 that it is trustworthy. And as the men of the age 
 that did so much to make provision for the education 
 of the masses of our people are rapidly passing away, 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 I have consented to place on record the steps by 
 which the present organisation of Popular Education 
 has been reached before my opportunity for doing so 
 has for ever passed away. 
 
 ROBERT GREGORY. 
 St. Paul's Deanery : Easter , 1895. 
 
OF THE ¥ 
 
 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 The last two centuries include all the efforts on 
 any considerable scale that have been made for Popular 
 Education in England. The schools of the monasteries 
 long before that time gave the opportunity of learning 
 to those who were minded to prepare for a clerical life, 
 and the number of distinguished men who rose from 
 the ranks of the poorer classes to the highest posi- 
 tions in Church and State is considerable. At the 
 revival of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
 turies many schools were founded, but they were 
 Grammar schools. Latin was considered essential, 
 and at a later period Greek was sorhetimes taught ; 
 but any public provision for elementary education, 
 as we now understand the term, did not exist. 
 Sir Charles Reed, in an address on ' Elementary 
 Education,' given by him as President of the Edu- 
 cation Department of the Social Science Congress 
 at Brighton in October 1875, tells us that 'Milton 
 and Locke appealed to the people for the better 
 education of neglected youth. But the men of Crom- 
 well's Parliament gave more heed to the Pulpit than 
 to the common school ; Wales, however, proved an 
 
lo ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 exception, for Gouge's schools, founded at that period, 
 still testify to the value of the first national effort in 
 the Principality.' 'In 1629 a school was founded at 
 Chigwell, where the children were to " read, write, 
 cypher, and cast accompts." The fees were low, and 
 in many cases there were none. Hampen's school 
 (1526) was free, but three pennies a year were paid 
 for drink and brutal sports.' In the school of Richard 
 Pate (1586) the fee was 4^., and an extra payment of 
 3^. was to be spent in * books chained to holdfasts,' 
 with liberty to the master to live on what further he 
 could get, while in other cases the parents paid the 
 'quarterage for roddes as hath been accustomed.' 
 At the feast of St. Michael, fines were exacted for 
 irregular attendance, and expended in ' candles for 
 winter afternoons.' 
 
 During the last two centuries efforts have been 
 made to bring education within the reach of all who 
 desired it. At first the attempts were the result of 
 the religious convictions of a few, and necessarily' 
 covered a very small portion of the land ; but it is 
 well to remember that such efforts were made. Then 
 the wars in which this country was engaged during 
 a large portion of last century^ seriously interfered 
 with the development of educational efforts ; and it 
 was not until the commencement of this century that 
 a foundation began to be laid for a national provision 
 for the education of all the children in the land. 
 During the reign of William III. there was a re- 
 markable religious revival, from which sprang schools 
 still in existence. The great instrument in carrying 
 out this work was the Society for Promoting Chris- 
 
THE S.P.C.K. II 
 
 tian Knowledge, which was founded in 1698, and had 
 for its first object the creation and support of schools 
 in which children of the poorest class might receive 
 sound religious and secular education. In a history 
 of that Society by a late secretary, published in 1848, 
 we are told that : * In Hatton's " New View of 
 London" (1708, p. 580) is given a list of twenty-two 
 churches in London in which lectures were preached, 
 and collections made at appointed times towards the 
 maintenance of the charity schools. It is also stated 
 that there were then within the bills of mortality 
 sixty charity schools, wherein were taught 2,248 
 children — of whom there were clothed 1,874, of whom 
 there were apprenticed 862 — for maintenance of whom 
 there were : annual subscriptions, 536/. ; collections 
 after sermons, 1,434/.; gifts, 5,861/.'* And 'By the 
 year 1741 nearly 2,000 charity schools had been 
 established through the means of the Society in 
 Great Britain and Ireland.' ^ And ' Such was the 
 zeal with which the clergy pursued the object in 
 view, that many in the country put poor children to 
 school at their own charge. In some places they 
 themselves took the trouble of teaching them gratis. 
 In others, persons were made parish clerks on con- 
 dition they would teach a certain number of children 
 gratis. At Warwick a charity box set up in church 
 with this inscription, *' For the use and increase of 
 the Charity School," had so good an effect, that 
 several children were taught and clothed by what 
 was put into it. In some places a part, in others the 
 
 ' Account of Efforts of S.P.C.K. on Behalf of National Education. 
 By Rev. T. B. Murray, pp. 31, 32. 2 md,^ p. 42. 
 
12 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 whole, of the offertory money was appropriated to 
 the teaching of poor children. Some of the colleges 
 at Cambridge gave their communion money to the 
 schools.' ' 
 
 And what is still more remarkable, the account 
 for 17 17 says, 'At Winlaton, in the county of 
 Durham, the workmen of an ironwork, who are about 
 400 or 500, allow one farthing and an half per shilling 
 per week, which, together with their master's contri- 
 bution, maintains their poor, and affords about 17/. 
 per annum for teaching their children to read, &c.' ^ 
 
 The promoters of these schools were not satisfied 
 with founding them, and providing funds for their 
 maintenance ; they were anxious to secure their 
 efficiency. The Committee of the Society for the 
 Promotion of Christian Knowledge 'On 1700-1, 
 January 1 3, resolved : That the Rev. M. Coghan be 
 the inspector of all the charity schools in and about 
 London and Westminster. His salary of ^20/. per 
 annum was provided by the Society.' ^ 
 
 It was also proposed to establish training institu- 
 tions in order ' To prepare young persons for the 
 arduous and responsible work of instructing children.'"* 
 But this proposal fell through, and was never acted 
 upon. 
 
 * In many of the Welsh schools the adult people, 
 men and women, being ignorant of the English 
 tongue, are taught to read the Scriptures in the 
 British language. And most of the masters instruct 
 for three or four hours in the evening, after school 
 
 ^ Account of Efforts of S. p. C,K. on Behalf of National Education. 
 By Rev. T. B. Murray, pp. 13, 14. * Ibid.:, pp. 14, 15. 
 
 3 Ibid.y p. 25. * Ibid., pp. 30, 31, 
 
THE WELSH CIRCULATING SCHOOLS 13 
 
 time, twice as many as they had in the schools by 
 day, who could not attend at other times.' 
 
 In the year 1730 the Rev. Griffith Jones, Rector 
 of Llandowm, founded the Welsh circulating schools, 
 an organisation which enabled the incumbent of a 
 parish to obtain the services of a schoolmaster for a 
 few months, after which he passed on to the next 
 district that required instruction. In thirty years the 
 number of scholars thus educated amounted to 58,237. 
 
 It was in this period that the ward schools in the 
 City of London were founded, and it would be easy 
 to give a long list of the more important parishes in 
 and about the City which then established schools. 
 Many of these still exist. It was considered essential 
 that the children should be clothed as well as taught, 
 from which it does not follow that the children to be 
 benefited were to be the poorest of the poor, but 
 that in the feeling of the time the labouring classes 
 could not be expected to help themselves in what 
 appertained to such a superfluity as education was 
 then considered. The schools were all small ; few of 
 them could have accommodated more than fifty 
 scholars. For some, buildings were erected, whilst 
 many must have been held in hired premises. From 
 this starting-point we may obtain a view of the 
 progress made in spreading popular education in 
 London during the century. There were in 
 
 Schools Boys at school Girls at school 
 
 1704 ... 43 ... i>398 ... 745' 
 
 1755 ... not given ... 3,548 ... 1,9012 
 1810 ... 116 ... 2,589 ... 2,438* 
 
 * Storv' s Survey , i. 194. ^ Ibid. 
 
 3 S.P.CK. Report, iSll, pp. 125-127. 
 
14 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 These figures show, at the latest date, retrogression, 
 not progress. And if this was the case in London, 
 it is not to be expected that other parts of England 
 would exhibit a brighter picture. Bishop Law, in 
 his charge to the clergy of the diocese of Chester in 
 1 8 14, speaks as though the clergy were mindful of 
 their duty in this matter, and were doing what they 
 could. He says : * In many of the northern parts of 
 this diocese, the clergy themselves keep schools, and 
 among their useful labours let not this be forgotten. 
 They thus not only instruct their pupils in the 
 rudiments of literature, but communicate to them at 
 the same time an early knowledge of the saving 
 truths of Christianity.' ^ It is difficult to trace the 
 extent to which such schools existed, the class of 
 children who frequented them, or their effect in pro- 
 moting a desire for education. 
 
 With the application of steam powej* to the 
 manufacture of cotton and woollen stuffs, there arose 
 a demand for child labour such as had not previously 
 existed. The guardians of the poor took advantage 
 of this demand, and not infrequently apprenticed 
 children of six or seven years old to masters who 
 would exact as much labour from them as they could 
 get, whilst they made no provision for their education 
 — religious, moral, or secular. No more revolting 
 pictures of unrighteous greed can be found than those 
 which were exposed in the early years of this century 
 by members of the House of Commons, and by 
 Committees of the House, when dealing with the 
 treatment of apprenticed pauper children. — - 
 
 * Charge^ p. 20. 
 
THE FIRST SUNDAY SCHOOLS 15 
 
 Towards the close of the last century, some 
 benevolent persons, amongst whom stands conspicu- 
 ous Robert Raikes of Gloucester, were much moved 
 by the abounding godlessness and ignorance of the chil- 
 dren with whom they came in contact : and, resolved 
 to do something to ameliorate their condition, they 
 commenced Sunday Schools where the children 
 should, at all events, learn to read. As numbers of 
 them flocked into these schools, the system rapidly 
 extended, and in 1785 a Sunday School Union was 
 formed with a mixed committee of Churchmen and 
 Dissenters. In 1803, there were reported to this 
 Society 7,125 Sunday Schools in Great Britain, having 
 88,860 teachers and 844,728 scholars ; and even this 
 large number, the report of the Union assures us, did 
 ' not by any means include all the Sunday Schools in 
 Great Britain, as there were many who did not report 
 to the Sunday School Union.' 
 
 In the beginning of this century more continuous 
 efforts were made to extend education than had been 
 previously undertaken, and its very first year was 
 marked by what promised well. The Bishop of 
 Durham (Dr. Shute Barrington) obtained an Act of 
 Parliament (41 Geo. III. c. 120) to enable him to 
 make provision for the establishment of schools for 
 the education of poor children in the county of 
 Durham. Upon the enclosure of certain common- 
 lands in the townships of Framwellgate and Witten 
 Gilbert, he alienated a portion of that to which he 
 was entitled, * for the establishment and maintenance 
 of one or more school or schools for the religious and 
 virtuous education of poor children of the said County 
 
i^ ELEMENTARY EDUCATION _ 
 
 Palatine of Durham.' The income arising from the 
 property has been applied to this good purpose ever 
 since, and now amounts to a little more than 60/. 
 annually. 
 
 Two or three years later Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters were captivated by a system of teaching 
 which promised to be successful, and was certainly 
 cheap. Dr. Andrew Bell and Mr. Joseph Lancaster 
 were respectively the champions of rival sets of 
 schools, and much useless and acrimonious contro- 
 versy was raised as to their respective claims to 
 priority of invention. Their plan was to employ 
 monitors to a great extent, so that under the guidance 
 of one head teacher a large number of children might 
 receive instruction. The discussion of their proposals 
 infused new life and vigour into the efforts for pro- 
 moting education, by attracting attention to the sub- 
 ject. Mr. Lancaster was first in the field in England, 
 whilst Dr. Bell had previously introduced his plan at 
 Madras. At first, the Archbishop of Canterbury and 
 several other Church dignitaries favoured Mr. Lan- 
 caster's plan ; but when they found that the Church 
 Catechism was not allowed to be taught in his 
 schools, and that the religious teaching was avowedly 
 of an undenominational character, they withdrew ; 
 and they resolved, under the auspices of Dr. Bell, to 
 establish Church schools to be taught on the moni- 
 torial or mutual instruction system. Sounder views 
 respecting modes of teaching have long since super- 
 seded the plan then adopted, but the impetus it gave 
 to education has been lasting, and has produced 
 abundant fruit. To originate and sustain schools 
 
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY 17 
 
 founded on Dr. Bell's system, it was thought desirable 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the leading 
 members of the Society for Promoting Christian 
 Knowledge that the Church should have a separate 
 society, whose exclusive object should be the promo- 
 tion of elementary education in England and Wales. 
 In consequence, the National Society for Promoting 
 the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the 
 Established Church was founded on October 16, 181 1, 
 and in 1817 it was incorporated by Royal Charter. 
 The supporters of Mr. Lancaster's schools formed 
 themselves into a committee for developing schools 
 upon his (undenominational) system, which eventually 
 in 1 8 14 assumed the title of the British and Foreign 
 School Society. 
 
 The foundation of the National Society began 
 an era in the history of popular education in this 
 country. As its name distinctly proclaimed, its 
 primary object was a religious one ; but to that it 
 joined a determination to promote secular instruction, 
 and, throughout its consistent and successful career, it 
 has ever been the fearless supporter of whatever 
 would tend to the improvement and development of 
 elementary education. Moreover, it proclaimed from 
 the outset that, whilst seeking to educate the children 
 of the Church in Church principles, it desired that all 
 other communions should have the same liberty. In 
 a statement of its principles, issued by the meeting 
 which called the Society into existence, this is clearly 
 set forth. ' It must indeed be admitted, in this country 
 of civil and religious liberty, that every man has a 
 right to pursue the plan of education that is best 
 
 B 
 
1 8 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 adapted to the religion which he himself professes. 
 Whatever religious trusts, therefore, men of other 
 persuasions may think proper to combine with the 
 mechanism of the new system — whether tenets 
 peculiar to themselves, or tenets oLa more general 
 nature — they are free to use the new system so 
 combined without reproach or interruption from the 
 members of the Establishment. On the other hand, 
 the members of the Establishment are not only 
 warranted, but in duty bound, to preserve that system, 
 as originally practised at Madras, in the form of a 
 Church of England education.' ^ 
 
 To estimate the value of the work accomplished 
 by the National Society and the British and Foreign 
 School Society, and the difficulties which had 
 to be overcome, it is necessary to know some- 
 thing of the popular feeling of the day about education. 
 Some light is thrown upon this by the debate on a 
 Bill introduced by Mr. Whitbread into the House of 
 Commons in 1807. Apparently stimulated by the 
 educational controversy then raging between the 
 friends of Dr. Bell and Mr. Lancaster, he proposed a 
 '■ Bill for establishing parochial schools in England 
 and Wales for the instruction of the children of the 
 poor.' The preamble sets forth very fairly Mr. 
 Whitbread's views, as expounded at greater length in 
 his speeches. He says : ' Whereas the instruction of 
 youth tends most materially to the promotion of 
 morality and virtue, and to the formation of good 
 members of society, whereof we have the most con- 
 vincing proof by long experience in that part of the 
 United Kingdom called Scotland, and it is expedient 
 
MR. WHITBREAD'S BILL 19 
 
 that provision should be made for the instruction of 
 the children of the poor of England and Wales.' 
 
 His Bill ordered that within one year from its 
 becoming law a school should be established in every 
 parish : that the minister, churchwardens, and over- 
 seers should be the governing body : but that they 
 should report their resolutions to the Vestry, and 
 then, if approved, these should be confirmed by the 
 Justices of the Peace acting for the hundred. They 
 were to be empowered to levy a rate, not exceeding a 
 shilling in the pound, which was to form part of the 
 poor rate. If the parochial authorities neglected to 
 make the requisite school provision, it was to be 
 made by the Justices of the Peace. The children were 
 to be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the 
 girls, in addition, needlework, knitting, and other 
 useful employments. The only provision for religious 
 instruction was that children who did not attend a 
 place of worship with their parents or guardians 
 should go with the teacher to Divine service in the 
 church or chapel of the parish. This Bill, which 
 seemed to take for granted that 8,000 or 10,000 com- 
 petent teachers could be procured by an advertisement 
 in a newspaper, and suggested that morality and 
 virtue rested upon reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
 was received with profound apathy. Apparently no 
 petitions were presented in its favour, whilst there 
 were some against it. Mr. Sturges Bourne moved an 
 amendment, making all the provisions of the Bill 
 optional, and this was carried by 33 to 12, showing 
 that little more than a quorum of members took the 
 trouble to attend the debate. In the House of Lords 
 
 B 2 
 
20 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 the Bill was rejected on the second reading without 
 a division, Lord Hawkesbury objecting to it ' because 
 it did not propose to place instruction more upon a 
 religious basis,' ^ the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. 
 Manners Sutton) ' because the framers of it had no 
 conception of the vastness of the task they had under- 
 taken.' 2 
 
 For some years afterwards, those who were 
 anxious for the education of the people on religious 
 grounds had the field to themselves. It was clear 
 that no influence or popularity was to be gained in 
 Parliament, or in the country, by advocating a 
 measure which was regarded with indifference by 
 those who did not oppose it. The case is well 
 stated by Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, who, we believe, 
 was himself a Unitarian.^ 
 
 * The idea of education for the poor sprang from a 
 religious impulse ; it was fostered by intense religious 
 zeal, it regarded the school as the nursery of the 
 church and congregation, and confided its manage- 
 ment to its chief communicants, to the deacons, 
 elders, and class teachers. Thus the Sunday school 
 became the type of the daily school, and it was 
 natural that elementary education should even in 
 day schools at first comprise only such instruction as 
 enabled the scholar to read the Holy Scriptures.' 
 
 It was during this period of apathy, when neither 
 political influence nor personal popularity was to be 
 gained by advocating the cause of popular education, 
 that many Churchmen began to toil in the cause with 
 
 ' Hansard, 1807, p. 1174. ^ Ibid., p. 1177. 
 
 ' Public Education, p. 34. 
 
THE WORK OF THE NATIONAL SOCIETY 21 
 
 the greatest diligence and zeal. During the first four 
 years of the existence of the National Society eighty- 
 five schools are reported to have been built with its 
 aid, at a cost of not less than 100,000/. ; whilst a 
 considerable number of noblemen and gentlemen 
 were stirred up by what it was doing to erect schools 
 at their own expense upon their estates for their 
 poorer tenants. There was then no thought of beauty 
 of form or architectural correctness in the buildings 
 destined for educational purposes. In a report of a 
 sub-committee of the National Society it is stated 
 that ' a barn furnishes no bad model, and a good one 
 may easily be converted into a school.' The taste 
 of the day was alike in church and in school building 
 — it needed to be educated, and this was effected as 
 the work progressed by improvements being gradually 
 introduced, whilst from the first large sums were often 
 expended to procure solidity and permanence. 
 
 To revert to the operations of the National 
 Society, of whose foundation I have spoken. Its first 
 work was to create a desire for education amongst the 
 masses of the people by providing schools in which 
 their children might be taught, and at the same 
 time to promote the education of suitable persons to 
 become efficient teachers in the schools that were 
 founded. These two works it has steadily and per- 
 severingly prosecuted since its foundation in 181 1, 
 enlarging its efforts as opportunity served and as 
 results suggested, and ever ready to improve the 
 education given in its schools when it could do so 
 with probable success. 
 
 The Society's first work was to establish a school 
 
22 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 on Holborn Hill, which was soon supplanted by a 
 much larger one in Baldwin's Gardens, Gray's Inn 
 Lane. This was intended to be a central school in 
 which teachers might be trained, as well as children 
 taught. At the same time it encouraged the forma- 
 tion of societies in all parts of the country, which 
 should be affiliated to itself, act upon its principles, 
 and provide schools for their several neighbourhoods, 
 as itself endeavoured to do for all parts of London. 
 Moreover, it made grants to assist schools in union, 
 and helped to provide the cost of training teachers 
 at its central school. From the agencies thus set 
 in motion a considerable number of schools soon 
 sprang into existence. In 1812, the year after 
 the foundation of the Society, it had in union 52 
 schools in which 8,620 children were taught ; in the 
 following year the number of schools had increased 
 to 230, and of scholars to 40,484. The terms of 
 union in these early days of the Society's history did 
 not consist in the insertion in the trust deeds of a 
 particular clause defining the objects for which the 
 school was founded, or its relation to the Church or 
 to the National Society ; but they were expressed in 
 different ways according to circumstances, and are 
 not infrequently found in the application for union 
 forwarded to the Society by managers, and not in a 
 form of words prescribed by the Society to managers. 
 The prominent idea of all of them was that the 
 children were to be educated in the principles of the 
 Established Church. To ensure greater uniformity in 
 the operations of the various local associations, and 
 to inspire all with greater zeal in the cause of educa- 
 
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY'S SCHOOLS 23 
 
 tion, a society of secretaries to the diocesan and 
 district societies as auxiliary to the National Society 
 was formed, of which a meeting still continues to be 
 held every year on the Society's premises on the day 
 after its annual meeting, at which the pressing subjects 
 of educational interest are discussed. 
 
 The other portion of the Society's work — training 
 suitable teachers for schools — progressed after the 
 same manner. The Society's fourth Report (181 5) 
 says that the Society retained in its pay ten masters 
 educated in the central school, 'who were sent to the 
 assistance of persons interesting themselves in the 
 formation and remodelling of schools upon the 
 National system.' In addition to this it admitted 
 forty probationers during the year to be instructed in 
 its system, and educated fifty-two teachers sent up 
 from country schools so as to make them more com- 
 petent, according to the standard of the day, for the 
 efficient discharge of their duties. Besides this the 
 Report says, * No fewer than 86 mistresses have been 
 trained under Mrs. Rogers in the central school, 66 
 of whom have come recommended from the managers 
 of different schools in the country, and the remaining 
 20 have by permission of the School Committee 
 attended for instruction at their own request, the 
 greatest part of whom have been appointed to re- 
 spectable situations.' This year the number of schools 
 in union had grown to 564, and of children in attend- 
 ance to 97,920. The mode of teaching adopted in 
 the National Society's schools was the simultaneous 
 system of Dr. Bell. This was rather a system of 
 mutual instruction in which monitor and scholars 
 
24 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 both learned, than one of education in which the 
 ignorant were really instructed by a competent 
 teacher. Perhaps one of its most happy effects may 
 have been that it suggested the idea of the pupil 
 teacher system, to which we are so largely indebted 
 for having raised our elementary schools to their 
 present level. 
 
 Additional light is thrown upon the state ot 
 education at this period bylhe census returns. In 
 1803 the estimate was that 524,241 children, or one 
 in every 17J persons, was at school ; in 18 18 there 
 were under instruction 674,833 children, or one in 
 every 17^ of the population. It must be remembered 
 that these figures include children of all classes. 
 When, therefore, we take into account that the upper 
 and middle classes invariably secure some education 
 for their children, it is obvious that the vast mass of 
 children of the poorer classes were never found at 
 school. Possibly the cleverer children among them, 
 and those who showed aptitude for learning, were 
 sent to school, whilst the others, constituting the 
 great proportion, were made useful so soon as they 
 were capable of giving help in the home, or of 
 attending to any industrial employment by which 
 they could earn wages, however trifling. The slight 
 variation in the proportion of children at school 
 between 1803 and 1818 shows the smallest possible 
 advance ; substantially in actual results during the 
 intervening years the country had made very little 
 educational progress. The grievous depression of 
 trade following upon the close of the long war, 
 the disturbed state of some of the manufacturing 
 
PROGRESS OF THE NATIONAL SOCIETY 25 
 
 districts, and the suffering condition of a large por- 
 tion of the labouring classes, must have seriously- 
 interfered with any advance in popular education. 
 Whatever progress there had been must be credited 
 to the closing years of the period just named, and it 
 is only due to the National Society to claim for it the 
 impetus towards improving the education of the 
 masses of the people which was beginning to be felt. 
 During seven of these years that Society expended 
 37,568/. in furthering the great cause for which it was 
 founded ; and this expenditure by the central body 
 must have secured a very much larger amount being 
 locally contributed ; moreover, the efforts made by 
 its supporters and the plea for improved provision for 
 popular education which it was constantly putting 
 forth in a variety of ways, could not fail to have some 
 considerable influence upon popular opinion. 
 
 Each year's Report of the Society's proceedings 
 shows an advance ; in some years it is more rapid, in 
 others less so. But the results of the efforts made 
 began to be felt throughout the country after 181 5, 
 and from that time onward the proportion of children 
 under instruction shows decided signs of growth. In 
 181 5 the number of schools in union with the Society 
 was 564, in 1830 it had grown to 2,609.^ In 18 18, 
 out of a population of a little more than eleven mil- 
 lions and a half, 674,833 children were at school ; in 
 1 83 3j out of a population of about fourteen millions and 
 a quarter, 1,276,947 children were under instruction; 
 
 ' I regret that I am not able to furnish a similar statement respecting 
 the work of the British and Foreign School Society. I endeavoured 
 to obtain one, but it was not to be had. 
 
26 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 so that whilst the population had grown at the rate 
 of 25 per cent, the numoer of children attending 
 school had increased by nearly 100 per cent. This 
 changed the -proportion of the population at school 
 from I in \y\ in 1818 to i in 11 J in 1833. 
 
 The following extract from a report of the Chris- 
 tian Instruction Society in Manchester throws light 
 on the state of things in one of the poorest parts of 
 that town in 1831.^ * At the commencement of the 
 present year, returns were made, from which the 
 following facts were ascertained. The dwellings 
 visited by the Society were about 350, containing 
 nearly 600 families, which consisted of about 1,800 
 resident members. In these families there were chil- 
 dren under ten years of age, 453 ; children sent to 
 day schools, 149 ; children sent to Sunday schools 
 only, 240 ; children old enough to be sent to school, 
 but not sent, 93.' The attendance at a day school in 
 Manchester was likely to be much lower than in 
 most other parts of England, as in no town was there 
 a greater demand for child labour. 
 
 To account for this very considerable advance it 
 is necessary to take note of what was done by earnest 
 philanthropic men who were unconnected with the 
 National Society. The names of a few of these may 
 not improbably have been found on the Committee 
 of the British and Foreign School Society. During 
 the period just named — 18 18 to 1833 — there had 
 been no change in the attitude of the country towards 
 elementary education ; no assistance towards its 
 furtherance had been voted by Parliament. But 
 
 ' Four Periods of Public Education, p. yj. 
 
EARLY VIEWS OF EDUCATIONISTS 27 
 
 opinion began to be leavened, and a feeling to spring 
 up that something ought to be done. There were in 
 fact two classes of persons in whom the growth of 
 this feeling may be noted. They agreed in the prin- 
 ciple that the children of the poorer people ought to 
 be educated, and that such education should not be 
 based upon religion, but they did not agree in the 
 motive which led to this conclusion. Neither of 
 these parties took much share in promoting schools ; 
 but one of them was always ready to bring the ques- 
 tion before Parliament, and to discuss it whenever the 
 opportunity was given, and was ever trying to bias 
 and mould public opinion by books and publications 
 of various kinds. It included a small but earnest 
 body of philanthropists who looked to secular educa- 
 tion for the fundamental improvement of the people. 
 They had no faith in the power of religion ; but, 
 finding from statistical returns that the vast majority 
 of crimes were committed by illiterate persons, they 
 jumped to the conclusion that ignorance, not poverty 
 and absence of religious principle, was the cause of 
 crime, and that if it were removed the catalogue of 
 offences would be materially lightened ; quite forget- 
 ting, as it seems to me, the character of the offences, 
 and the lack of deterrent influences in the case of vast 
 numbers of the poorest people. 
 
 The other class of persons consisted of politicians 
 who were jealous of any political influence which 
 might accrue to the friends of the Church from their 
 efforts in educating the children of the poorer people. 
 Until the electoral franchise was lowered by the 
 Reform Bill of 1832 there was nothing to induce 
 
28 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 these persons to care for education, because neither 
 political influence nor the respect of the community 
 was to be gained by advocating its interests ; we 
 look in vain for any efforts on their part to establish 
 schools or otherwise promote a desire for education. 
 Not so with the former of these classes. They really 
 cared for the subject. At their head was Mr., after- 
 wards Lord, Brougham. In 1816 he obtained the 
 appointment of a Committee of the House of 
 Commons to inquire into the state of the education 
 of the lower orders in London, Westminster, and 
 South wark, and in 1817 the Committee was re- 
 appointed. In its third Report this Committee says : 
 * A circular letter has been addressed to all the clergy 
 in England, Scotland, and Wales, requiring answers 
 to queries, of which a copy will be found in the 
 appendix. It is impossible to bestow too much com- 
 mendation upon the alacrity shown by these reverend 
 persons in complying with this requisition ; and the 
 honest zeal which they displayed to promote the 
 great object of universal education is truly worthy of 
 the pastors of the people, and the teachers of that 
 Gospel which was preached to the poor.' 
 
 It praises the considerate manner in which the 
 children of Dissenters and Roman Catholics are 
 treated in Church schools ; it reports a great deficiency 
 of school provision ; it recommends State help towards 
 supplying school buildings, and * throws upon the 
 inhabitants the burden of paying the schoolmaster's 
 salary, which ought certainly not to exceed 24/. a 
 year ; ' the schoolmasters ' to be allowed the benefit 
 of taking scholars who can afford to pay, and to be 
 
THE FIRST EDUCATION GRANT 29 
 
 permitted their leisure hours in other pursuits.' The 
 religious question it proposes to settle by 'placing 
 the choice of the schoolmaster in the parish vestry, 
 subject to the approbation of the parson and the 
 visitation of the diocesan ; ' and by a conscience 
 clause. 
 
 A practical result of this Committee was an Act 
 in 1 81 8 for appointing commissioners to inquire con- 
 cerning charities in England for the educa- 
 
 A.D. I033 . r ^ 1*1 11-- 
 
 tion of the poor, which was extended m its 
 application by an Act passed in the following year. 
 Besides this, Mr. Brougham introduced a Bill into 
 Parliament in 1820, founded upon the Report of his 
 Committee, but this had to be dropped after a discus- 
 sion on the second reading. In 1833, the year after 
 the passing of the Reform Bill, the first grant was made 
 out of public funds towards education. This grant of 
 20,000/. was proposed by Lord Althorpe, and was to 
 be applied exclusively for building purposes to schools 
 in union with the National Society and the British 
 and Foreign School Society ; it was provided that 
 each Society should benefit by one half of the grant, 
 so that Churchmen and Dissenters might feel them- 
 selves placed on an absolute equality. The grant was 
 opposed by Mr. Hume and some extreme Radicals on 
 the ground that the funds required should be supplied 
 out of existing endowments, which it was alleged 
 were misapplied ; and by some Tory Churchmen on 
 the ground that it endowed Dissenting schools. 
 These objections were overruled, and grants were 
 made to the two societies on condition that the 
 schools they aided should receive ten shillings from 
 
30 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 voluntary societies for each child for whom accom- 
 modation was provided, and ' that no application be 
 entertained unless a sum be raised by parish contri- 
 butions equal at the least to one-half of the total 
 expenditure.' This grant for building 'purposes was 
 continued unaltered for six years. 
 
 In the year 1835 Parliament had so far realised 
 that no real advance could be made in the improve- 
 ment of popular education until a body ot 
 teachers had been trained for the purpose, as 
 to vote a sum of lopoo/. towards the erection of normal 
 or model schools, and according to the custom of the 
 time half of that sum was to be given to the National 
 Society and half to the British and Foreign School 
 Society when they had complied with the conditions 
 imposed. It was some time before this grant could be 
 claimed, as many preliminary difficulties had to be 
 overcome, the kind of work being new in England ; 
 and besides this large sums had to be raised by voluntary 
 subscriptions before the work could be safely com- 
 menced. The National Society proceeded to purchase 
 eleven acres of land in Chelsea, on which St. Mark's 
 College was erected, and the first students were re- 
 ceived into it in April 1841, under the care of the Rev. 
 Derwent Coleridge, the first principal. The British and 
 Foreign School Society erected a little later the 
 college in the Borough Road. 
 
 Before either of these colleges came into active 
 operation endeavours were made by Dr. Kay and Mr. 
 Tufnell (to whom great praise is due for their inde- 
 fatigable efforts to raise the tone and standard of 
 elementary education) to provide better instruction for 
 
SCHOOLS OPENED IN EDINBURGH 31 
 
 pauper children, in whom they felt a special interest 
 as Poor Law Inspectors. Of their work in this cause 
 I proceed to give a somewhat detailed account, as it 
 resulted in becoming practically the first institution of 
 the kind to come into active operation. 
 
 During this period of commencing activity more 
 progress in the way of preparatory efforts was made 
 than people generally are aware of; and for some of 
 this we are indebted to Scotland.^ On January i, 
 1 8 1 2, Edinburgh was disgraced with terrible scenes of 
 riot and bloodshed that disclosed a lamentable extent 
 of youthful depravity in that city. Aroused by the 
 revelations then made, the ministers of the Established 
 Church in Edinburgh resolved ^ to open in each of 
 the parishes of the city a school for the Religious 
 Instruction on the Lord's Day of the children of the 
 poor, under a teacher to be specially appointed for 
 the purpose by the Kirk Session of the parish, who 
 was also to accompany his pupils to the parish 
 church during the hours of Divine service. * So soon 
 as the schools were opened it was found that a large 
 proportion of the children could not read. To meet 
 this want the Directors determined to open a day 
 school, which was done on April 29, 1813, under the 
 name of the Edinburgh Sessional School.' The 
 system inaugurated by Dr. Bell and Mr. Lancaster 
 was introduced, and so the school progressed. 
 Happily for its future good Mr. Wood, a member of 
 the Episcopal Church and Sheriff for Selkirkshire, 
 became acquainted with it, through the interest he 
 
 ' Account of the Edinburgh Sessional School^ by John Wood, Esq., 
 p. 19. * Ibid. ^ p. 20. 
 
32 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 took in the Society for the Suppression of Begging. 
 This led him to pay a few visits to the school, 
 and these ^ * impressed him with a very high opinion 
 of the utility of the monitorial system, if rightly 
 conducted, in furthering the important objects of 
 general education.* In the winter of 1819-20 he 
 had charge of a fund subscribed for the operative 
 weavers thrown out of employment by the pressure 
 of the times. The managers of this fund determined 
 that the boys helped by it should be sent to the 
 Sessional school ; and Mr. Wood, recognising the 
 importance of regularly looking after these lads, even- 
 tually attended the school daily, and took part in 
 the instruction given. His labours were so much 
 valued by the Directors of the school that they begged 
 him to continue his help to the school after the 
 immediate cause of his visits had ceased. Through his 
 wise influence and oversight the school became famous, 
 as a perfect model of what an elementary school ought 
 to be ; and to read his description of the principles on 
 which he acted and of the success which he achieved 
 shows how thoroughly he had grasped what was needed 
 to make a school really efficient. It is thus that he lays 
 down the duties of school managers. I quote his words, 
 because they describe accurately the system by which 
 the school under his care rose to the celebrity to which 
 it attained, as I am assured by one who was for a time 
 a pupil within its walls.^ * Whenever a seminary is 
 under the management of Directors (Managers), its 
 success or failure may, in a great measure, depend 
 
 ^ Account of the Ediuburgk Sessional School, by John Wood, Esq., 
 p. 25. 2 Edinburgh Sessional School^ p. 79. 
 
MANAGERS AND TEACHERS t,-^ 
 
 upon the manner in which they discharge their 
 important duties. By cold indifference, on the one 
 hand, they may to a certain degree damp the ardour 
 of even the most zealous teacher. By officious inter- 
 ference, on the other, they may paralyse his best 
 exertions. If, for example, they give themselves no 
 further trouble about their seminary than visiting it, 
 perhaps once a year on a public day, may not the 
 indolent teacher become remiss, even the zealous wax 
 cold ? If they prescribe and obstinately adhere to a 
 system of education or discipline, which, however 
 beautiful it may appear to them in theory, is by him 
 found practically inefficient — what avail his best 
 exertions } If they anxiously discourage all attempts 
 on his part at improvement upon no better ground 
 than that he cannot point his finger to the chapter 
 and verse where it is " so nominated " in the code of 
 Lancaster or Bell, or some other equally orthodox 
 authority, to which his superiors have thought proper 
 most religiously to attach their faith — he must 
 patiently submit to the mortification of seeing his 
 seminary far outstripped by those of others, perhaps 
 much his inferiors, who are either left uncontrolled or 
 at least are placed under more judicious control. Or 
 if, on the other hand, " carried about with every wind " 
 of opinion, they readily admit for the purpose of 
 experiment every crude suggestion which may be 
 made, either by any of their own number or by others 
 alike inexperienced in teaching, or recklessly adopt 
 any particular part of a system which as a whole has 
 proved successful elsewhere, without viewing it in all 
 its bearings, as connected either with other arrange- 
 
 C 
 
32 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 took in the Society for the Suppression of Begging. 
 This led him to pay a few visits to the school, 
 and these ^ * impressed him with a very high opinion 
 of the utility of the monitorial system, if rightly 
 conducted, in furthering the important objects of 
 general education.' In the winter of 1819-20 he 
 had charge of a fund subscribed for the operative 
 weavers thrown out of employment by the pressure 
 of the times. The managers of this fund determined 
 that the boys helped by it should be sent to the 
 Sessional school ; and Mr. Wood, recognising the 
 importance of regularly looking after these lads, even- 
 tually attended the school daily, and took part in 
 the instruction given. His labours were so much 
 valued by the Directors of the school that they begged 
 him to continue his help to the school after the 
 immediate cause of his visits had ceased. Through his 
 wise influence and oversight the school became famous, 
 as a perfect model of what an elementary school ought 
 to be ; and to read his description of the principles on 
 which he acted and of the success which he achieved 
 shows how thoroughly he had grasped what was needed 
 to make a school really efficient. It is thus that he lays 
 down the duties of school managers. I quote his words, 
 because they describe accurately the system by which 
 the school under his care rose to the celebrity to which 
 it attained, as I am assured by one who was for a time 
 a pupil within its walls.^ * Whenever a seminary is 
 under the management of Directors (Managers), its 
 success or failure may, in a great measure, depend 
 
 ' Account of the Ediuburgh Sessional School, by John Weod, Esq. , 
 p. 25. 2 Edinburgh Sessional School^ p. 79. 
 
MANAGERS AND TEACHERS 33 
 
 upon the manner in which they discharge their 
 important duties. By cold indifference, on the one 
 hand, they may to a certain degree damp the ardour 
 of even the most zealous teacher. By officious inter- 
 ference, on the other, they may paralyse his best 
 exertions. If, for example, they give themselves no 
 further trouble about their seminary than visiting it, 
 perhaps once a year on a public day, may not the 
 indolent teacher become remiss, even the zealous wax 
 cold ? If they prescribe and obstinately adhere to a 
 system of education or discipline, which, however 
 beautiful it may appear to them in theory, is by him 
 found practically inefficient — what avail his best 
 exertions } If they anxiously discourage all attempts 
 on his part at improvement upon no better ground 
 than that he cannot point his finger to the chapter, 
 and verse where it is " so nominated " in the code of 
 Lancaster or Bell, or some other equally orthodox 
 authority, to which his superiors have thought proper 
 most religiously to attach their faith — he must 
 patiently submit to the mortification of seeing his 
 seminary far outstripped by those of others, perhaps 
 much his inferiors, who are either left uncontrolled or 
 at least are placed under more judicious control. Or 
 if, on the other hand, " carried about with every wind" 
 of opinion, they readily admit for the purpose of 
 experiment every crude suggestion which may be 
 made, either by any of their own number or by others 
 alike inexperienced in teaching, or recklessly adopt 
 any particular part of a system which as a whole has 
 proved successful elsewhere, without viewing it in all 
 its bearings, as connected either with other arrange- 
 
 C 
 
34 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 ments or with the peculiar circumstances of the 
 institution — what is to be expected from such a mode 
 of management ? ' 
 
 Still further to show how completely the requisites 
 for a really good education had been grasped at that 
 time, I quote the following from his description of 
 what the head teacher should be, and of what the 
 head teacher in the school in which he was interested 
 really was.^ ' If it be true that under a bad system of 
 education the exertions of the best teacher may be 
 rendered comparatively of little avail, it is at least 
 equally true on the other hand that on the qualifica- 
 tions of the teacher the success or failure of the best 
 system will chiefly depend. He must be the very 
 life and soul of the system. If he be indolent, his 
 monitors and pupils will be alike inactive ; if he be 
 enthusiastic, they, to a certain degree, will participate 
 in his energy. Nothing can be a greater mistake than 
 to suppose that under the monitorial system the 
 master may for a single moment be idle without 
 injury to the school. If during school hours he be 
 not incessantly actively employed, his school must 
 suffer in proportion, be the qualifications or learning 
 of his monitors what they may. He ought seldom or 
 never to be found in his desk, but always on the floor 
 among his pupils, and almost always in the act of 
 teaching. It is quite erroneous to suppose that it is 
 the monitors alone whom he is to teach, and that at 
 all other times the only duty which he has to perform 
 is the superintendence of general order. He ought, 
 on the contrary, to visit and to teach every class as 
 
 • Edinburgh Sessional School^ pp. %l, 84. 
 
THE MODEL SCHOOL AT NORWOOD 35 
 
 its circumstances may demand ; and with regard to 
 the inferior classes in particular, where every lesson is 
 a new step, they ought never to be allowed to pass 
 from one lesson to another without undergoing a 
 previous personal examination by himself, in order to 
 determine whether the class is fit to advance, and 
 whether any of its individual scholars must be left 
 behind in an inferior one.' 
 
 At the night attendance of this Sessional school 
 Alexander Wilson ^ went to study. Mr. Wood saw 
 the ability and natural talent of the youth for becom- 
 ing a teacher, and persuaded him to leave the voca- 
 tion he was following, and prepare to enter upon the 
 teaching profession. For five years he was placed 
 in charge of the Duchess of Buccleuch's school at 
 Dalkeith. Then Dr. Kay (who was afterwards Sir 
 James Kay Shuttleworth) sought, in the year 1839, for 
 the best teacher he could find for an important school 
 which he was anxious to make a model school. This 
 school was a large pauper establishment at Norwood, 
 containing about 1,400 boys, who had been gathered 
 from various workhouses in and about London, and the 
 cost of whose board and education was provided by 
 the guardians of the poor of their respective parishes. 
 Dr. Kay, as a Poor Law Inspector, had taken a deep 
 interest in the education of the poor, and as he was 
 then entering upon the duties of permanent secretary 
 to a newly-constituted Education Department, a post 
 which he filled with conspicuous ability, he was 
 naturally anxious to make this important school a 
 model of what such an institution ought to be. At 
 
 • Now Vicar of Tuttenham and Prebendary of St. Paurs. 
 
 c 2 
 
36 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 that time it was in want of a head-master, and Dr. 
 Kay naturally turned to the celebrated Sessional 
 school in Edinburgh to find a person who might raise 
 this school to as high a level as that from which he 
 was seeking a teacher. He was recommended at 
 Edinburgh to visit a school at Dalkeith, and to per- 
 suade the master of it to occupy the vacant position. 
 This he did, and Mr. Wilson was placed as head- 
 master of the Norwood school. There he laboured 
 successfully for about a year and a half, when a 
 deputation waited upon him from the National 
 Society to invite him to take charge of their Model 
 school, which had been removed to the Sanctuary, 
 Westminster, as well as of the training college for 
 masters in Manchester Buildings, and of that for 
 mistresses in Smith Square. Dr. Kay sought to 
 retain him at Norwood ; but Mr. Wilson was an 
 earnest Churchman, and he preferred working in 
 direct connection with the Church to retaining the 
 position he held, where Church teaching was not 
 considered of primary importance, although most 
 alluring prospects were held out to him if he would 
 remain where he was. At Westminster he found 
 about seventy masters and as many mistresses in 
 training to become teachers. The training lasted 
 generally for six or nine months, and consisted chiefly 
 of instruction in the art of teaching, and some instruc- 
 tion under a clergyman in the evening. It was sup- 
 posed that a large amount of the literary education 
 of the candidates had been completed before they 
 came to Westminster. These colleges did good work 
 until they were superseded by the larger residential 
 
THE BATTERSEA NORMAL SCHOOL 37 
 
 colleges that were called into existence a few years 
 later. At the same time four organising masters 
 were employed by the National Society to assist the 
 managers of schools in connection with the Society 
 in making their schools more efficient. 
 
 About the same time ( 1 840) Dr. Kay, with the assist- 
 ance of some of his friends, founded a Normal school 
 at Battersea (which has since developed into 
 St. John's Training College) for training 
 teachers, specially for the instruction of pauper children. 
 His first wish was that the authorities most competent 
 to undertake such a task would recognise their re- 
 sponsibilities and do what was required. But this 
 hope failing, he and his friends determined^ ' to devote 
 a certain portion of their own means to this object, 
 believing that when the scheme of the institution was 
 sufficiently mature to enable us to speak of results 
 rather than of anticipations, the well-being of 50,000 
 pauper children would plead its own cause with the 
 Government and the public, so as to secure the future 
 prosperity of the establishment' The house having 
 been properly fitted up for the purpose, Dr. Kay under- 
 took to superintend it for a limited period, and some 
 boys were removed from the school of industry at 
 Norwood (about which mention has been made a page 
 or two back) in February 1 840, whose conduct had 
 given confidence in their characters, and who had made 
 sufficient proficiency in the elementary instruction of 
 that school. ' Mr. Eden, the Vicar of Battersea, greatly 
 assisted in maturing the plans by offering the use of 
 his village schools in aid of the training school, as the 
 ' First Report of the Training College of Battersea^ p. 198. 
 
38 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 sphere in which the pupils might obtain a practical 
 acquaintance with the art of instruction. He also 
 undertook to superintend the training school in all that 
 related to religion.' Besides the students just named, it 
 was arranged ^ ' to receive young men, to remain at 
 least one year in the establishment, either recom- 
 mended by our personal friends, or to be trained for the 
 schools of gentlemen with whom w^e were acquainted.' 
 There w^ere soon collected nine of these students. 
 The literary attainments of the students are thus 
 described : ^ ' The boys who were selected as appren- 
 tices were rather chosen on account of their characters 
 than their acquirements, which were very meagre. 
 The young men who have been admitted as students 
 have frequently been found even worse prepared than 
 the boys of thirteen years of age, chiefly brought from 
 Norwood, though some of these young men have been 
 in charge of village and workhouse schools. Their 
 acquaintance even with rudimental knowledge did 
 not bear the test of slight examination. With pupils 
 and students alike, it was therefore found necessary 
 to commence at an early stage of instruction, and to 
 furnish them with the humblest elements of know^- 
 ledge. The time which has elapsed since the school 
 was opened ought therefore to be regarded as a pre- 
 paratory period, similar to that which in Germany is 
 spent from the time of leaving the primary school to 
 sixteen, the period of entering the normal school, in 
 what is called a preparatory school.' There was a 
 good deal of teaching in gardening, household work, 
 
 ' First Report of the Training College of Baftersea, p. 199, 
 2 Ibid., p. 208, 
 
MAINTENANCE OF STUDENTS 39 
 
 and gymnastics, and Mr. Tate and Mr. Home were 
 the chief instructors. The expense of the establish- 
 ment is thus set out, and the manner of providing it ^ : 
 * The average cost of the maintenance, lodging, and 
 education of each pupil amounts to 50/. per annum, 
 including the rent, salaries, and all incidental expenses. 
 Many pupils have been admitted without charge, and 
 some at low rates of payment, but the highest re- 
 muneration has been 30/. per annum, together with a 
 weekly sum of \s. The Directors have recently 
 admitted adult pupils only, at a charge of 30/. per 
 annum. They have therefore estimated the amount 
 of outlay, which falls upon themselves, for fifty pupils at 
 1,000/. per annum ; but the engagement of any new 
 masters would increase this expenditure by the whole 
 salary and emoluments of such additions to their 
 present staff. The patrons and friends of pupils are 
 seldom disposed to expend more than 30/. upon the 
 training of a master, and, according to the above 
 scheme, one year's maintenance and training can be 
 procured for such a sum ; the arrangements of the 
 establishment allowing that fifty schoolmasters may 
 annually receive certificates of one year's training by 
 an outlay of 1,000/. per annum, in addition to the 
 payments of the pupils.' 
 
 With regard to the religious instruction of the 
 students, this first Report says : * The Sunday has been 
 partially occupied by its appropriate studies. The 
 services of the Church have been attended morning 
 and evening, and besides a certain period devoted to the 
 study of the formularies, the evening has been spent in 
 
 ' First Report of the Traimng College of Battersea, p. 60. 
 
40 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 writing out from memory a copious abstract of one of 
 the sermons. At eight o'clock these compositions have 
 been read and commented upon in the presence of the 
 whole school ; and a most useful opportunity has been 
 afforded for religious instruction, besides the daily 
 instruction in the Bible. Mr. Eden has likewise 
 attended the school on Friday, and examined the 
 classes in their acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures 
 and formularies of the Church. The religious depart- 
 ment generally is under his superintendence.' 
 
 What the State did towards helping the founding 
 of this first training college of the same character and 
 scope as the training colleges now in existence is thus 
 recorded : — 
 
 ' At a meeting of the Committee of Council on 
 
 Education, held November 1 1, 1842 : Read the Minute 
 
 of this Committee, dated June 23, 1841, 
 
 and presented to Parliament in the session 
 
 of 1842, relating to the Battersea Normal School. 
 
 * Read a letter from Dr. Kay and Mr. Edward 
 Carleton Tufnell, stating that the expenses of estab- 
 lishing the school, and maintaining it to December 
 1842, are upwards of 4,000/. beyond the sums 
 received from the patrons and friends of pupils in 
 repayment of the charges of their maintenance and 
 education, and that about 1,500/. has been contributed 
 by persons interested in elementary education towards 
 this charge of 4,000/., leaving 2,500/ in December 1842, 
 which sum has been advanced by Dr. Kay and Mr. 
 Edward Carleton Tufnell for the establishment and 
 support of the school from their private funds. 
 
 ' Resolved : That in consideration of the services 
 
BATTERSEA COLLEGE 41 
 
 rendered by the Battersea Normal School to the 
 executive Government in the education of school- 
 masters, and of the number of masters now training 
 therein, who are available for the public service, 1,000/. 
 be granted towards the expenses hitherto incurred in 
 the establishment of that school, the right of inspection 
 being secured in perpetuity.' 
 
 In the year 1844 the Battersea College was handed 
 over to the National Society, and the following arrange- 
 ments were made for its management : The 
 Rev. Thomas Jackson was appointed Princi- 
 pal, and instead of the college being primarily intended 
 for students chosen from the pauper school at Norwood, 
 it was to be specially devoted to the preparation of 
 schoolmasters for the manufacturing and mining 
 districts. Several members of the old staff re- 
 mained, and the number of students rose from 24 
 in 1844 to 6j in 1845. Their ages at the earlier date 
 ranged from 1 5 to 42, the average being 2 1 years and 
 five months; at the later date from 16 to 29, the 
 average being 21 J years. Under the management of 
 Dr. Kay youths of 1 5 were admitted ; when the 
 college passed into the hands of the National Society 
 the minimum age was raised to 16. 
 
 The subject of education was now frequently 
 brought before Parliament, and was one in which 
 the country took an increasing interest. In 
 the autumn of 1838 the Government invited 
 the two Societies, through which the building grants 
 had been dispensed, to inspect the schools which had 
 come into existence. It was then found that 690 
 schools had been built, or were in course of erection, by 
 
42 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 the National Society, whilst those in connection with 
 the British and Foreign School Society were only i6o. 
 It was therefore scant justice to the Church to offer 
 an equal sum of 500/. to the two Societies for the 
 cost of inspection ; but the National Society consented 
 to the arrangement, and was content to ignore the 
 unequal manner in which it was treated. 
 
 It will be seen from this that the efforts made in 
 behalf of elementary education by the religious portion 
 of the community were beginning to be felt as a 
 political influence in the country, and that the subject 
 was in a fair way of being taken up by politicians. 
 There was visibly preparation going on. The Church 
 was endeavouring to improve as well as to extend 
 her appliances for the spread of education, whilst 
 those who represented the mere secular side of the 
 question had realised the imperfection of much that 
 was being done, and the need to prepare for some- 
 thing better before a final step was actually taken. 
 The religious impulse had led many of the labouring 
 classes to value education for the benefits it conferred 
 upon them, and had prepared the mind of the nation 
 to permit the people generally to be educated ; then, 
 but not till then, the State took part in the work. 
 The National Society had been promoting the erection 
 and improvement of schools for the poorer classes for 
 twenty-two years before Parliament made any sign 
 that it felt the least interest in the subject. 
 
 Great changes were now intended ; the Govern- 
 ment, having found in Dr. Kay an able 
 and accomplished Secretary (but as a 
 Nonconformist one not likely to sympathise with 
 
OF COUNCIL ON EDUCATION 43 
 
 Church-school teaching) to undertake the work of an 
 Education Department, proceeded to active operations. 
 On April 10, 1839, an Order in Council was issued 
 directing the formation of a Committee of Council to 
 administer the education grant, which was raised to 
 30,000/. This Committee seemed to spring into 
 existence like a second Minerva, prepared at once to 
 show its wisdom and to do battle with its foes ; 
 but doubtless preparations for its formation had 
 long been incubating. Three days after it had 
 been formally constituted its first Minutes appeared. 
 Its first proposal was that itself should administer 
 the building grants from the public purse for edu- 
 cation, instead of leaving them as heretofore to be 
 distributed by the Lords of the Treasury in conjunction 
 with the National Society and the British and Foreign 
 School Society. For the future it was to be un- 
 necessary for a school seeking Government aid to be 
 in union with either of these Societies, as had been 
 previously required. It was further ordered 'that 
 no grant be made now or hereafter for the establish- 
 ment of normal schools, or of any other schools, 
 unless right of inspection be retained, in order to 
 secure a conformity of the regulations and discipline 
 established in the several schools with such improve- 
 ments as may be from time to time suggested by the 
 Committee.' Besides this, the Minute proposed ' that 
 the Committee of Council should itself found a school 
 in which candidates for the office of teacher in schools 
 for the poorer classes might acquire the knowledge 
 necessary to the exercise of their future profession, 
 and might be practised in the most approved methods 
 
44 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 of religious and moral training and instruction.' This 
 school was to include a model school, in which children 
 of all ages from three to fourteen might be taught. 
 It was intended to train in it so large a number of 
 children, that there might be in it an infant department, 
 as well as one for children above seven. The re- 
 ligious instruction to be imparted in this school and in 
 those connected with it was to be divided into general 
 and special ; the general instruction was to be such as 
 was common to all kinds and denominations of persons 
 calling themselves Christians, and was to be given to 
 all the children in common ; whilst periods were to be 
 'set apart for such peculiar doctrinal teaching as might 
 be required for the religious training of those children 
 who were wishful to receive it' 
 
 The proposal to found such a school or schools 
 excited a general outcry throughout the country. It 
 offended the religious sentiment of all people who 
 had any real faith in the Christian Revelation. 
 Churchmen and Dissenters were alike loud in pro- 
 claiming their dislike of the plan, and so strong were 
 the representations against it showered upon the 
 Government that on June 3 it was officially stated 
 ' that it is not in the power of the Committee of 
 Council to mature a plan for the formation of a normal 
 school without further consideration, and that they 
 therefore postpone taking any steps for the purpose 
 until greater concurrence of opinion is found to prevail.' 
 This concession failed to secure a calm. It was felt 
 that what was so much disliked had only been post- 
 poned, not abandoned, and that the principle, to which 
 religious people of all shades of opinion were so much 
 
EDUCATION IN PARLIAMENT 45 
 
 opposed, remained rooted in the minds of those in 
 authority. A week before the withdrawal of the 
 offensive proposal, a large and enthusiastic meeting of 
 the National Society ^ad been held under the presi- 
 dency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which it 
 had been resolved ' That it was an object of the highest 
 national importance to provide that instruction in the 
 truths and precepts of Christianity should form an 
 essential part of every system of education intended 
 for the people at large, and that such instruction 
 should be under the superintendence of the clergy, and 
 in conformity with the doctrines of the Church of this 
 realm, as the recognised teacher of religion.' At the 
 same time it was resolved to take further steps for the 
 more efficient training of teachers for Church schools. 
 Shortly after this meeting, Lord Stanley moved an 
 amendment in the House of Commons, when the vote 
 for education was proposed. This was the most 
 direct way of Parliament censuring what had been 
 done, as the Order in Council constituting a Com- 
 mittee of its own body to superintend the work 
 of education did not require the formal sanction of 
 Parliament. This amendment was defeated by a 
 majority of five. The great struggle was then trans- 
 ferred to the House of Lords. There, on July 5, the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury carried a series of resolutions 
 in the form of an address to the Queen by a majority 
 of 229 against 118. These resolutions deprecated 
 the entrusting to any public authority without the 
 consent of Parliament the important functions com- 
 mitted by Order in Council to the Committee of 
 Council on Education, asserted that ' the particular 
 
48 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 to lower the religious tone of education, and to deprive 
 the Church of a considerable portion of the honour she 
 was gaining as the popular educator. If the wishes of 
 some of those who take a prominent part in managing 
 Board schools can be realised, it may be found that 
 the Act of 1870 laid the foundation for a system of 
 secular education. The great defence against such a 
 calamity must be looked for in the increasing zeal and 
 self-denial of the friends of Denominational schools, 
 and by their unceasing efforts to impress upon the 
 country the importance of acting upon the true prin- 
 ciples of religious liberty with respect to the assistance 
 to be given from public funds to voluntary schools. 
 
 The opposition to the other parts of the Govern- 
 ment proposal was less successful. A public depart- 
 ment for education having been brought into existence, 
 it was not possible for two religious societies • to 
 have any more power in administering public money. 
 The professed object for which the Government had 
 taken up the subject was to spread education over 
 all the country, and to accomplish this the amount of 
 money to be voted must eventually become very 
 large if the contemplated success were to follow. The 
 Committee of Council from that time onward has dis- 
 tributed the education grant, whilst the direct control 
 over it by Parliament has been practically small. The 
 Council withdrew the expression of the requirement 
 objected to, that schools receiving a Government 'grant 
 for building schools 'should stipulate to accept a con- 
 dition that would ' secure conformity of the regulations 
 and discipline established in them, with such improve- 
 ments as may from time to time be suggested by the 
 
LORD BROUGHAM'S BILL 49 
 
 Committee/ but by unostentatious and frequently 
 judicious requirements it has practically secured for 
 itself the control that \vas aimed at over all schools 
 receiving annual grants. 
 
 The designs of the party desiring a general 
 system of undenominational education were still 
 further manifested by a Bill introduced into Parlia- 
 ment in June of this year (1839) by Lord Brougham. 
 It provided for founding and supporting schools all 
 over the country by rates ; these schools were to be 
 managed by school committees, consisting of five 
 persons each, elected by the ratepayers, landowners, 
 and residents of a year in a parish. All schools so 
 founded and supported were to be required ' to have 
 the Holy Scriptures read in them as a part of the 
 reading therein, provided that no child of Jewish or 
 Roman Catholic parents be required to be present, 
 and that no Catechism be taught to, nor Liturgy 
 used by, nor attendance on Church or other religi- 
 ous observance be required of such children. The 
 carrying of the Archbishop's resolutions rendered the 
 success of such a Bill impossible. 
 
 The immediate effect of this Parliamentary action 
 upon the National Society was very great. Not- 
 withstanding the alterations in the terms required by 
 the Committee of Council for building grants, pro- 
 moters of schools could not be persuaded to accept 
 them . There was universal distrust of the Government 
 and of the objects at which they aimed, and Churchmen 
 feared what the Committee of Council might require, 
 since they had Parliament to a considerable extent at 
 their back. This fear deterred many of the friends of 
 
 D 
 
50 , ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 religious education (the only ones who made personal 
 sacrifices to promote the cause) from those sacrifices 
 of time and money which they otherwise would have 
 made, and withheld them from any connection or 
 co-operation with the new Education Department. 
 * So general, indeed, was the aversion among the 
 members of the Church to the required Government 
 conditions, modified though they had been, that out 
 of 204 applicants for Government aid, to whom offers 
 were made, only forty-nine accepted it. Even four- 
 teen of this small number afterwards declined, 
 not in consequence of any influence exerted, or any 
 communications made by your Committee, but chiefly 
 in consequence of perusing the instructions of the 
 Privy Council to their inspectors, which, as they 
 conceived, clearly showed what great influence these 
 officers would necessarily acquire, and to what pur- 
 pose that influence might be applied.' ^ 
 
 On February 19 of this year (1839),' the exact 
 conditions upon which diocesan boards and district 
 societies were to be received into union with the 
 National Society were definitely settled. Also for 
 the first time the precise terms of union to be required 
 from all schools wishing to connect themselves with 
 that Society were arranged. These terms of union 
 are very nearly identical with those now in use, and 
 from that time to the present the following clause 
 has been inserted in the trust deeds of schools in 
 union : ' And it is hereby declared that the said 
 school shall always be in union with, and conducted 
 according to, the principles and in furtherance of 
 
 ' National Society's Report ^ 1840, p. 6. 
 
GOVERNMENT INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS 51 
 
 the ends and designs of the Incorporated National 
 Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in 
 the Principles of the Established Church throughout 
 England and Wales.' 
 
 Under the circumstances just detailed it can be 
 no matter for surprise that the action of the newly 
 created Committee of Council on Education produced 
 little effect for some years. Only 305,000/. was 
 expended out of national funds on education between 
 1839 and 1846, and this sum was wholly applied to 
 * promoting by grants the building of schools on 
 improved plans, and with better internal arrange- 
 ments, and in founding and extending inspection.' ^ 
 With the growing feeling in the country in favour of 
 popular education, and with a general desire on the 
 part of active clergymen and philanthropic landed 
 proprietors and wealthy merchants, manufacturers, 
 and others to secure that all who desired it should 
 have efficient schools brought within their reach, such 
 a slow growth in the operations of the Education 
 Department testifies in the strongest manner to the 
 deep-seated distrust in the action of that Department 
 which the proposals of the Government had inspired. 
 When, therefore. Government inspection was insisted 
 upon, though under other circumstances it would 
 probably have been welcomed, it was regarded as an 
 insidious mode of securing control over Church 
 schools. Many promoters of schools, who had 
 received the promise of a Government grant before 
 the new conditions were imposed, but who had been 
 
 ' Memorandum on Popular Education^ by Sir J. K. Shuttleworth, 
 p. 7. 
 
 D2 
 
52 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 unable to complete their buildings within the time 
 appointed, and who were therefore unable to claim 
 such grant without a renewal of its promise, suffered 
 serious inconvenience rather than accept it upon the 
 terms now required. I know of one case (and there 
 were probably many others) in which the vicar sold 
 all the good furniture out of his own house, and was 
 content for years with boards supported upon tressels 
 for his dining-table, and with forms instead of chairs, 
 in order to provide the sum on which he had relied 
 from the Government grant, but which he was unable 
 to obtain on account of the reason just given. No 
 doubt subsequent events have shown that a good deal 
 of this suspicion was very exaggerated ; but under the 
 circumstances of the time it was very natural, and 
 possibly the sacrifices then made did much to secure 
 the better terms which the promoters of Denomina- 
 tional schools enjoyed for some years. 
 
 By what was thus happening it became clear to 
 those in command at the Education Department, 
 that if elementary education in its present stage was 
 to be materially advanced, it must be accomplished 
 by cordial co-operation with Churchmen and other 
 friends of education, and not by attempting to dragoon 
 them into the acceptance of terms which Liberal poli- 
 ticians and religious Gallios might most approve. 
 And so we find that in the following year (1840) a 
 concordat was made between the National Society 
 and the Privy Council. The Lord President proposed 
 to the Archbishop of Canterbury that the names of 
 persons to be appointed inspectors of Church schools 
 should be submitted to the Archbishop of the province 
 
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY'S INCOME 53 
 
 in which they were to labour, and that they should 
 not be appointed until his consent to their nomination 
 had been received. On July 15 this proposal was 
 agreed to, and the authorities in Church and State 
 were able to work together in furthering elementary 
 education, though it was not until some years later 
 that the clergy generally laid aside their suspicions, and 
 so secured really cordial co-operation between them. 
 The many and important discussions of the 
 educational question during this year (1839) drew the 
 attention of the Committee of the National Society 
 to the great need that existed for more strenuous 
 efforts than had yet been made for the spread of 
 education among the poorer classes of the people. 
 It was felt that the true way for the Church to 
 vindicate to itself the right to be the educator of the 
 nation was by undertaking the office on a more 
 extended scale than had hitherto been attempted. 
 The funds at the disposal of the Society were much 
 less than were needed, and, although much larger 
 sums were locally collected and expended, it was 
 thought that a more imposing central fund should be 
 raised in order to stimulate or create zeal in the 
 more lukewarm and backward neighbourhoods. The 
 National Society's income in 1838-9 from donations 
 and subscriptions was only 2,842/., and though this 
 was largely" increased by the Queen's letter,^ which 
 produced about 25,000/. every third year, still the 
 whole sum was much less than was required. This 
 
 ' Each year a Queen's letter was issued to all the clergy, inviting 
 them to have collections for one of the three great Church societies, of 
 which the National Society was one. 
 
54 ELEMENTA RY ED UCA TION 
 
 was felt the more at this crisis as it was resolved to 
 provide additional training colleges in which teachers 
 might be efficiently prepared for their work, as well as 
 to erect, in increasing numbers, schools wherever they 
 might be wanted. The greater interest, however, 
 aroused by the events just detailed largely added to 
 the Society's revenues, which amounted to 17,339/. in 
 1839-40, or more than six times the amount in the 
 previous year. It was now only necessary for the 
 veil to be raised which hid the deep depravity and 
 the seething masses of evil in the hastily-gathered 
 centres of mining and manufacturing industry, to 
 excite a steadfast resolve that Church education 
 should be provided as speedily as possible for the 
 whole nation, and to arouse generous, self-denying 
 exertions which would do much to realise what had 
 been resolved on. 
 
 Such a manifestation soon threw its lurid light 
 upon the moral condition of some parts of the 
 country. In 1839, and again in 1842, a mutinous 
 spirit was exhibited throughout the manufacturing 
 and mining districts, which broke out in many places 
 into open riot. All through Lancashire, the West 
 Riding of Yorkshire, the Potteries, and in parts of 
 Durham and Monmouthshire, there were disturbances 
 of a more or less disorderly and violent character. 
 The causes of these outbreaks were investigated in 
 different ways, and so was brought to light the 
 existence of gross religious ignorance and godlessness, 
 such as more prosperous members of society had 
 little suspected. To remedy some of the evils thus re- 
 vealed Sir James Graham introduced into Parliament 
 
SIR JAMES GRAHAM'S BILL 55 
 
 in 1843 'A Bill for regulating the Employment of 
 Children and Young Persons in Factories, and for the 
 better Education of Children in Factory Districts.' 
 This Bill not only provided for the limitation of the 
 hours during which children might work, and for 
 their receiving a half-time education, but sought to 
 establish a system of schools partially built and 
 supported by rates. The Bill ordered that one-third 
 of the cost of a school approved by the Justices of 
 the Peace at Petty Sessions might be borrowed from 
 the Loans Commissioners, and that during ten years 
 'the overseers shall pay the annual instalments of 
 the said loan, together with the interest due in respect 
 of such loan, and the amount, if any, to be thereafter 
 required towards the future maintenance of the said 
 school out of the rates levied by them for the relief 
 of the poor.' Besides this local contribution out of 
 the poor rate, the Committee of Council on Education 
 was empowered to contribute ' one moiety of the cost 
 of the enlargement or erection of a school.' In such 
 schools theHoly Scriptures in the Authorised Version 
 were to be taught, but no child of Church parents was 
 ' to be required to attend such a school, unless 
 provision be made therein for the instruction of such 
 child in the Catechism and Liturgy of the Established 
 Church.' In committee all the clauses relating to 
 the erection of schools were struck out. It was felt 
 that the principle of providing schools by rates was 
 a faulty and a dangerous one, and that it destroyed 
 the idea of distinctively religious teaching for the 
 children ; and, moreover, the principle involved was 
 evidently too important to be dealt with in the 
 
56 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 manner proposed. There can be little doubt that, if 
 it had been then accepted, it would have seriously 
 interfered with the erection of Church schools : it 
 would have had a tendency to stop the flow of 
 private benevolence for the erection of Denominational 
 schools ; and so the Church would have been in a far 
 worse position for resisting a secular rival in the 
 field of education than she now is when she has 
 covered the country with her schools. Happily the 
 supporters of a religious education were not content 
 with simply resisting the schemes of their opponents. 
 They understood that their opposition could only 
 be permanently triumphant by their accomplishing 
 upon their own principles the work that had to be 
 done, and by their proving, as opportunity served, 
 that the education they advocated could show moral 
 results that ought to commend it to every good 
 citizen. Accordingly, a special fund was set on foot 
 in 1843 to provide for the better education 
 of all the children in the country in the 
 principles of the Established Church, and at the same 
 time information was gathered from all the recently 
 disturbed districts which showed that scarcely in a 
 single instance had any of those who had been trained 
 in Church schools taken part in the seditious pro- 
 ceedings by which the country had been outraged 
 and disgraced. 
 
 It may be convenient here to say a few words 
 about the state of Church schools at this date. Mr. 
 (afterwards Archdeacon) Allen thus reports of the 
 schools he inspected in that year : ^ 'Of the schools 
 
 ' Report of Committee of Council on Education^ 1842-3, pp. 48,49. 
 
CHURCH SCHOOLS FIFTY YEARS AGO 57 
 
 under masters I was most gratified with those at 
 Sudbury, Tickenhall, Chaddesden, Doveridge, Great 
 Longstone, and Smalley. The masters at Shardlow 
 and Spondon have considerable abihty, and their 
 schools are well disciplined and in many respects highly 
 satisfactory. There is much to give pleasure in the 
 other schools that I name, and in almost all that I 
 have mentioned the influence of the clergy and their 
 families is strongly felt, especially in the more 
 important subjects of instruction. Of the schools 
 superintended by mistresses I was best pleased with 
 those at Sudbury, Doveridge, Brailsford, Holbrooke, 
 and Dronfield. The girls at the Derby British 
 School were clean, orderly, and intelligent ; their 
 knowledge of Scripture was very gratifying. The 
 schools at five other places are pleasingly and 
 efficiently superintended, and seemed to me to be 
 working well. I have but little to add in the way of 
 general observations of the schools inspected to those 
 remarks that have been already submitted to your 
 lordships. The more my experience is enlarged, the 
 more earnestly desirous do I feel that the clergy 
 should take a living, constant, and effective interest 
 in the teaching given in our schools. Where this is 
 the case, how much may be effected with the very 
 humblest means almost exceeds belief 
 
 Under the circumstances of the case it may 
 perhaps scarcely seem strange to us that the special 
 fund prospered to the marvellous extent it did, even 
 beyond the sanguine expectations of its promoters. 
 In a comparatively short time 151,985/. was collected, 
 and with this large sum in hand the Committee of 
 
SS ELEMENTA RY ED UCA TION 
 
 the National Society wisely set to work not sim- 
 ply to increase the quantity, but above all to im- 
 prove the quality, of the Church education of the 
 country. 
 
 I have already mentioned the commencement of 
 training colleges of the present type. It was obvious 
 that if improved elementary education spread through- 
 out the country, as there was every reason to expect 
 it would, a much larger supply of trained teachers 
 would be required than the few existing colleges 
 could furnish. It was also tolerably clear that the 
 earlier arrangements for a short period of training 
 would not satisfy the popular requirement, and that 
 the admission of teachers untrained to teaching, 
 though capable of satisfying the literary demands 
 made upon them at the examination by Her Majesty's 
 Inspectors, could not be permanently continued, 
 though it might be most useful to meet a sudden 
 demand. The National Society therefore resolved 
 to utilise a portion of the large sum that had been 
 collected for the purpose of greatly increasing the 
 number of training colleges, and in this resolution 
 it was most liberally seconded by the Education 
 Department, which offered large building grants 
 towards erecting such colleges, and also annual main- 
 tenance grants that would supply a considerable 
 portion of the cost. After several changes in the 
 manner of administering the annual grant they give 
 towards maintaining training colleges, the Education 
 Department still provides about three-fourths of their 
 annual expenditure. Before 1870 Church people 
 had expended 194,085/. on erecting training colleges. 
 
CHURCH TRAINING COLLEGES 59 
 
 and 94,810/. in maintaining them ; since that date 
 they have had to furnish 94,810/. for the first of these 
 objects, and 327,391/ for the second. The National 
 Society has now in union with it thirteen colleges 
 in which 1,006 male students are being trained, and 
 seventeen colleges in which 1,210 female students are 
 being educated. Most of these colleges are diocesan, 
 no small portion of the funds needed for their erec- 
 tion and maintenance having been locally raised 
 under the influence or the stimulus given by the 
 liberal grants offered by the National Society and 
 the Education Department, and with the exception 
 of only one the National Society makes annually 
 liberal grants towards their maintenance. 
 
 The effort to provide school accommodation 
 received a considerable impetus at the same time, 
 and every year a large addition was made to the 
 number of schools and of children attending them. 
 But still the doubts and suspicions that had been 
 raised by the early action of the Department were 
 not so entirely dispelled as to cause such a rapid 
 growth of educational appliances as was witnessed a 
 few years later. 
 
 In 1846 a new departure was made. Up to that 
 time the Government had made no grants to promote 
 the efficiency of instruction. It had launched 
 schemes which it had been compelled to with- 
 draw, because the country was then resolved to have 
 no education that did not rest upon a definitely religi- 
 ous basis. On this point Churchmen and Noncon- 
 formists at that time seemed to be perfectly agreed. 
 Another plan had therefore to be adopted, as there 
 
6o kLEMENTAR V ED UCA TION 
 
 was a determination on the part of the Education 
 Department that the people should be better edu- 
 cated, and with this determination the nation agreed. 
 During the years just named measures had been 
 taken to provide better trained teachers, as I have 
 already pointed out, schools had been erected on 
 better plans, and all schools that had received build- 
 ing grants had been inspected. It was now deter- 
 mined to introduce a system of maintenance grants 
 that should be given to all schools, irrespective of the 
 religious denomination to which they belonged, on 
 equitable terms, so that all religious people, whatever 
 their profession, might feel an equal interest in pro- 
 moting popular education. At the same time, by 
 introducing such a system of public grants, the 
 power and influence of the State in directing the 
 education of the country were enormously increased, 
 and might at some future time be exercised in a way 
 that the promoters of new schools and the managers 
 of existing ones would little approve. This, however, 
 was not generally understood at the time, and those 
 who insisted upon it were stigmatised as opponents 
 of the education of the people. 
 
 Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, the author of the 
 proposals then made, thus describes them, and the 
 object they were intended to accomplish : ^ — ' The 
 Committee of Council submitted to Parliament their 
 Minutes of 1846. The intention of these Minutes 
 was to give an impulse to the growth and improve- 
 ment of the system founded by the religious com- 
 munions, and the efficiency of which had been 
 
 ' Memorandwn on Popular Education^ pp. 7, 8. 
 
THE PUPIL TEACHER SYSTEM 6i 
 
 increased by the Government grants and by inspec- 
 tion. Henceforth the Education Department directly 
 encouraged the introduction of a more adequate staff 
 of more skilful teachers. It made the schools the 
 scenes of the first five years of the teachers' training. 
 It selected from the classes immediately in contact 
 with the people, and generally from children of the 
 manual labour class, their future instructors, ensuring 
 an identity of interest and harmonious sympathies. 
 It confided the completion of their training to the 
 religious communions, who founded numerous col- 
 leges, in which the approved candidates spent two 
 years. It strove to employ the energy of religious 
 zeal by liberal encouragement from the Parliamentary 
 grant, in rearing and training a body of highly 
 instructed teachers, who throughout their experience 
 should breathe the air of the school, and be in con- 
 tact with the humblest classes. The extension o^ 
 popular education would thus proceed pari passu 
 with its improvement' * The grants of the Com- 
 mittee of Council on Education were at the average 
 rate of about one-third of the local outlay on build- 
 ing and supporting elementary schools.' It may be 
 well to give some details of the provisions made by 
 these minutes, as they were the groundwork of very 
 much that has been done since. By them the system 
 of pupil teachers was introduced. An elaborate 
 scheme of what the pupil teacher was to be, of the 
 examinations he or she was to pass at the end of 
 each of the five years of apprenticeship, of the 
 amount of instruction that was to be given by the 
 principal teacher, and the stipend that was to be 
 
62 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 paid by the Education Department, was minutely- 
 laid down. If all was satisfactorily done the pupil 
 teacher was to be paid lo/. at the end of the first 
 year, which was to increase 2/. \os. annually, so that 
 at the end of the fifth year there would be 20/. paid for 
 the year's work. One pupil teacher was to be allowed 
 for every twenty-five scholars ordinarily attending 
 the school in which they were apprenticed. As a 
 temporary expedient, monitors might be employed 
 at a lower scale of salaries to be paid by the Depart- 
 ment. The head teachers who had obtained certifi- 
 cates of competency, by passing an examination under 
 the auspices of the Department, were to have their 
 incomes augmented by a grant from the Department, 
 dependent in its amount upon the class gained by 
 the teacher at the examination just named, provided 
 that a sum equal to such grant was raised by volun- 
 tary subscriptions, and the total stipend, which was 
 not to be less than 70/., amounted to at least double 
 the sum provided by the Department. As the salary 
 from local sources increased the grant increased. 
 Besides this, the Department allowed the head teacher 
 5/. for instructing one pupil teacher, 9/. for two, and 
 12/. for three. It was also provided that pensions 
 should be secured to teachers after they had taught 
 for not less than fifteen years. 
 
 In the following year (1847) the Committee of 
 Council took further steps in advance. At first it 
 had suggested provisions to be inserted in 
 the trust deeds of schools, adapting the re- 
 quirements to the circumstances of the places where 
 the schools were to be erected. In this way four 
 
THE FORMS OF SCHOOL TRUST DEEDS 63 
 
 forms of trust deeds gradually came into use. In 
 1846 it was determined to make it compulsory to 
 use one of these forms in all cases, the penalty 
 being the loss of Government help ; and as this 
 help then amounted on an average to nearly one- 
 third of the cost of building, the fine for the refusal 
 of the Government terms was a heavy one. The 
 requirements of these management clauses were not 
 unreasonable. The}' secured that there should be 
 in all cases a committee to superintend everything 
 that appertained to the secular teaching and general 
 management of the school, whilst the charge of the 
 religious and moral instruction was placed in the 
 hands of the incumbent of the parish and his curates. 
 The committee was to consist in all cases of the in- 
 cumbent, his curates (if nominated by him), and a 
 specified number of other persons, who were to be 
 members or communicants of the Church. In some 
 cases these last-named members of the committee 
 were to be elected by the subscribers ; in others they 
 were to be nominated by the incumbent of the parish ; 
 while in others vacancies were to be filled up as they 
 arose by the remaining members of the committee. 
 Besides this, the Committee of Council claimed in all 
 cases the right to inspect and examine the school in 
 conformity with the Order in Council bearing date 
 August 10, 1840. The annual grant for maintenance 
 was kept quite distinct from the building grant ; and 
 the conditions required for the one were perfectly 
 independent of and different from those that were 
 essential for the other. 
 
 To the compulsory imposition of these manage- 
 
64 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 ment clauses a violent and long-continued opposition 
 was raised. The Committee of the National Society- 
 having obtained a slight alteration in them, accepted 
 them and recommended their adoption ; but a number 
 of their energetic supporters took a different view, and 
 vigorously opposed them. At the annual meeting 
 of the Society for some years the question was raised, 
 and views strongly dissenting from the action of 
 the Committee were expressed. It was urged by the 
 opponents that such an imposition virtually trans- 
 ferred the direction of the education of the country 
 from the Church to the State, and that by steady 
 encroachments the State would, at no distant day, 
 seek to deprive the Church of the influence it then 
 possessed in training the minds of the young. That 
 they were right in their construction of the intentions 
 of those who were directing the course of affairs it is 
 impossible to doubt, after reading the books on the 
 subject put forth by Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, 
 the very able first Secretary of the Education De- 
 partment, who exercised a predominant influence 
 over its affairs whilst he held that position. More- 
 over, it is certain that the view they held has been 
 justified by subsequent developments. But it is not 
 less certain that the opponents of the policy of the 
 Department took a most mistaken course in acting 
 as they did. They ought to have foreseen that it 
 was inevitable that measures would speedily be taken 
 to secure a general system of education for the whole 
 nation ; that in that case such a committee of 
 management as was proposed would be a strength 
 and not a weakness to the Church schools, and that all 
 
DOUBTS AND FEARS 65. 
 
 their energies ought to be applied to the multiplica- 
 tion of such schools, as the more ground they occu- 
 pied the more difficult it would be to supplant them. 
 Instead of that, by denouncing the action of the 
 Government they raised suspicions in the minds of 
 many liberal members of the Church, and thus held 
 them back from doing so much as they otherwise 
 would have done to multiply schools. It therefore 
 follows that, to the extent their action led to this 
 result, they assisted those to whose proceedings they 
 were opposed, and secured an amount of success to 
 their plans which they would not otherwise have 
 obtained. Moreover, it ought to have been foreseen 
 that, when popular education was extended, as it was 
 inevitable that it should be, much larger funds would 
 be needed for its support than could be furnished by 
 voluntary contributions. And it must be added that 
 the violent language sometimes used was freely 
 quoted by the Secretary of the Department, and raised 
 a prejudice against the speakers in the minds of some 
 well-affected persons. 
 
 It is, of course, easy to be wise after the event, 
 but at a period of transition it is difficult to divest 
 the mind of impressions derived from the fears nur- 
 tured by a heated imagination, for then it seems 
 impossible to some earnest men of excitable tem- 
 perament to take account of anything but the dangers 
 that seem to them to tend inevitably to the destruc- 
 tion of the existing state of things. Up to that time 
 Churchmen had taken the lead in all efforts for the 
 education of the people ; in fact, comparatively little 
 had been accomplished by others : and earnest religious 
 
 E 
 
66 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 members of her communion not unnaturally clung to 
 the thought that what she had done in the past she could 
 do in the future. Their eyes did not open to a vision 
 of a more general system of popular education. This 
 was unfortunate, and, as has been just said, helped to 
 bring about the very evils which they dreaded, and 
 which they thought they could successfully oppose. 
 But the want of foresight was not confined to them. 
 Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, in a letter dated 
 March 1 2, 1 847, writes : * * I read in the Patriot 
 newspaper this evening a letter to which your 
 name is attached, addressed on behalf of the Com- 
 mittee of Privileges to ministers of the Wesleyan 
 Association, requesting them " to use their best efforts 
 to get a petition from every congregation in their cir- 
 cuits " in order to induce " the House of Commons 
 not to vote any further sum of money to be placed 
 at the disposal of the Committee of Council on 
 Education, and to entreat the House to petition the 
 Queen to dissolve the Committee by whom this 
 pernicious scheme " (the Minutes of August and 
 December 1846) "has been recommended, and to 
 declare that the interests of the nation will be best 
 promoted by the non-interference of Government as 
 to the education of the people." A form of petition 
 is appended to this letter, and intended to be sent to 
 every congregation connected with your Association.' 
 For this purpose the petition commences with the 
 following representation : — * Her Majesty's Ministers 
 having recently brought before Parliament certain 
 Minutes of the Committee of Privy Council on 
 * Minutes of Cofnmiitee 0/ Council on Education, 1846, p. 17. 
 
A GRIEVANCE OF THE WES LEVA NS 67 
 
 Education, proposing that provision should be made 
 by Government for trafning, supporting, and pen- 
 sioning school masters and mistresses, and for creating 
 and supporting a widely-extended system of edu- 
 cation, by which it is intended that the instructors 
 of masses of the rising generation should become 
 Government stipendiaries, and expectants of Govern- 
 ment pensions, to obtain which purposes they will 
 have to secure the approbation of an inspector 
 appointed by Government, but who must also be 
 sanctioned by one of the Archbishops, and who is 
 to remain in office only so long as such sanction is 
 continued.' 
 
 In reply Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth probably divined 
 rightly when he passed over all other objections and 
 addressed himself to the grievance that Wesleyan 
 schools would be inspected by an inspector approved 
 by an Archbishop. He assured his correspondent 
 that no such affront would be placed on Wesleyan 
 schools, but that the inspector who would be sent to 
 them would be ' some one who did enjoy the confi- 
 dence of the Committee of Privileges.' With this 
 answer the correspondence appears to have closed. 
 
 The Committee of Council on Education had now 
 begun to feel that the opposition which it had to 
 encounter at first was quieting down, and that it 
 might boldly undertake the charge of whatever 
 appertained to the education of the poorer classes of 
 the population. In the same year (1846) the sum of 
 30,000/. was included in the estimates of the Poor 
 Law Commissioners for the salaries of the school- 
 masters of workhouses, and for the manner of applying 
 
68 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 this money the Secretary of the Education Depart- 
 ment naturally suggested a scheme, and proposed an 
 elaborate plan for the improvement of workhouse 
 schools, which seem to have sunk to a very low 
 standard of efficiency. At the same time the Educa- 
 tion Department resolved to expend 10,000/. on the 
 erection of a college for the training of masters for 
 workhouse schools, an equal sum for building pauper 
 and penal schools, and to provide 3,500/. a year to 
 meet the cost of maintaining the Normal school. At 
 the same time provision was made for imparting 
 some industrial training to the children in workhouse 
 schools, and also for their being duly inspected. 
 
 It may be well to mention what applies equally to 
 the years preceding 1 846, and to those which succeeded 
 it up to the passing of the Education Act of 1870. 
 Complaints were constantly made that the Church 
 had advantages conferred upon it that were not 
 possessed by the various denominations. For this 
 charge there was never the slightest foundation ; the 
 Education Department never showed the slightest 
 preferential treatment to Church schools ; in fact, those 
 who knew what was being done strongly suspected 
 that whatever favour was shown was to the other 
 side. The only pretence for the charge of partiality 
 to Church people rested upon the fact that the 
 number of Church schools erected was greatly in 
 excess of all the schools built by other people : but 
 the reason of this was that Church people made 
 sacrifices to erect and sustain schools, which mem- 
 bers of other communions would not do. Sir J. Kay 
 Shuttleworth (no special friend to Church schools) 
 
THE CAPITATION GRANT OF 1853 69 
 
 thus deals with this objection : ^ ' Considerable effort 
 has been made to produce an impression that the 
 Established Church of England will chiefly derive 
 advantage from the administration of the Parlia- 
 mentary grant, according to the Minutes of August 
 and December 1846; yet in point of the extent of 
 the requirements, which are conditions of grants 
 under these Minutes, the advantage is certainly on 
 the side of schools not connected with the Established 
 Church. In British and Dissenting schools the in- 
 spector will not examine the religious instruction ; ' 
 and,^ ' If such disparity (in the number of assisted 
 schools) should arise in the determination of Dis- 
 senters to reject the aid of the State," this would 
 obviously be a self-inflicted privation, by no means 
 inherent in the measure.' 
 
 * Several objects not recognised in the Minutes of 
 1846 became the subjects of grants. A capitation 
 grant, introduced by a special Minute in 
 1853, and intended only to apply to purely 
 rural parishes, was extended to the urban dis- 
 tricts. The individual examination of the scholars 
 in the three rudimentary subjects, by which the dis- 
 tribution of this grant was to have been regulated, 
 was not carried out,' ^ and consequently an opening 
 was made for the introduction of changes which were 
 brought about by the Revised Code, of which I shall 
 presently have something to say. 
 
 In 1853 another controversy was entered upon by 
 the Education Department that caused a good deal 
 
 ^ Four Periods of Public Education, p. 515. ^ Ibid., p. 517. 
 ^ Popular Education, p. . 
 
JO ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 of excitement and some bitterness of feeling during 
 several years. The managers of Church schools had 
 from the commencement been careful not to press 
 unfairly upon the children of Nonconformist parents, 
 as Mr. Brougham testified so far back as 1816, and 
 this principle had been continuously acted upon. 
 Occasional complaints were made ; but, when they 
 were examined, they were rarely found to have a 
 solid foundation, and for the most part they were 
 pushed into prominence, if not invented, by persons 
 anxious to compel the managers of Church schools to 
 open their doors compulsorily to children of parents of 
 all beliefs and of none. In 1853 the Education Depart- 
 ment took a step in advance, and endeavoured to force 
 upon the promoters of Church schools the insertion 
 in their trust deeds of a ' conscience clause ' that 
 would give the right to persons of other creeds to 
 demand for their children entire exemption from all 
 religious teaching. This demand was steadily re- 
 sisted on the ground that, whilst what was asked for 
 would readily be granted as a favour, it could not be 
 conceded as a right. In defence of this position it was 
 urged that the larger portion of the cost of erecting 
 and maintaining the schools had been supplied by 
 Church people for the special advantage of children 
 of their own faith ; that they had neither sought nor 
 desired that children of parents of other communions 
 should attend their schools ; and that whilst they were 
 ready to allow the liberty asked for, they could not 
 place themselves in the position of being legally 
 compellable to make the concession required, as they 
 did not know to what further requirement it might 
 
TRUST DEEDS AND THE CONSCIENCE CLAUSE 71 
 
 lead. Moreover, it was well known at the time that 
 the demand for the conscience clause did not proceed 
 from parents, who were all but universally content 
 with things as they were, but from political Noncon- 
 formist agitators, who had invented the grievance in 
 order to arouse opposition to the Church, and it was 
 notorious that, if this request were granted, there would 
 be an immediate demand for the admission of Dis- 
 senters to the Committees of Management of Church 
 Schools, under the pretence that in no other way could 
 the carrying out of the requirements of the ' conscience 
 clause' be effectually secured. Then, by those who 
 were responsible for the management of Church 
 schools, it was thought that so soon as this was 
 accomplished, and mixed committees of Churchmen 
 and Nonconformists were created, managers of Church 
 schools would have an endless contest to retain the 
 principles on which their schools had been founded, 
 and might very possibly be rendered powerless to 
 secure that definite religious teaching for children of 
 their own faith which they considered essential to 
 their spiritual welfare. The Education Department, 
 true to its policy of endeavouring to lower the tone 
 of the religious teaching in Church schools, did what 
 it could, without risking a split with the Church 
 authorities, to further the wishes of the Nonconfor- 
 mists ; but, as the Committee of the National Society 
 steadily refused to concede the demand, it did not go 
 so far as to refuse grants to schools that would not 
 consent to the admission of the clause into their trust 
 deeds. A further objection to such a course was the 
 deep distrust still felt by many Church people of the 
 
72 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 Department, that it had never been quite straight- 
 forward. Whenever there appeared to be an oppor- 
 tunity, it had seized the chance it seemed to present 
 for requiring something that Churchmen disHked, and 
 so insidiously rooting out definite Church teaching. 
 In this case the conscientious feeHngs of parents were 
 strongly urged by the opponents of Church teaching, 
 but, as I have already said, there was no reliable 
 evidence that such feelings ever existed. Still, the 
 argument found favour in the country, where the 
 facts of the case were not really known, and where 
 the statements and misrepresentations of the partisans 
 of a compulsory conscience clause were believed. 
 The religious convictions of parents and the principle 
 of religious liberty were then loudly asserted by men 
 who have not hesitated to disregard both by the 
 manner in which they have insisted upon the Cowper- 
 Temple clause in the Act of 1 870, and the extent to 
 which they have worked it. After some years of 
 discussion an amicable settlement was arrived at, 
 upon the terms that Church managers would accept 
 the admission of a conscience clause into the deeds 
 of their schools provided there was another clause in- 
 serted there to the effect that, upon the repayment of 
 the building grant made by the Department, they 
 might at any time free themselves from all relations 
 or obligations to it ; and it is a striking con^imentary 
 on the policy of the Department that, when Mr. 
 Cumin, the then Secretary of the Education Depart- 
 ment, was asked at the Education Commission in 
 1886 whether any school had ever taken advantage of 
 this clause, he said that applications to do so had 
 
OFFICIAL ATTITUDE TO CHURCH SCHOOLS 73 
 
 been made, but that the Department had never allowed 
 them. 
 
 Having said so much about the attitude of the 
 Education Department towards Church schools, it may 
 be well to justify what has been advanced by show- 
 ing the manner in which the animus was displayed. 
 Thus, e.g. the richer members of the Church were not 
 allowed to help the poorer members of the community 
 unfettered ; for it was a condition of all Government 
 grants for building that a sum equal to the grant 
 should be contributed by local proprietors or persons 
 living within four miles of the parish to be helped. In 
 consequence, for the darkest and most uneducated of 
 our country parishes, if their proprietors were Roman 
 Catholics, or Nonconformists, or opposed to popular 
 education, or indifferent about the moral and spiritual 
 welfare of their neighbours, the proffered assistance 
 of Churchmen at a distance was refused, and the 
 State practically insisted that the children should 
 remain untaught and unchristianised, because it would 
 not allow any portion of the grants it made to be 
 applied towards helping the brotherly love of Church- 
 men at a distance to provide schools for the most 
 grievous cases of educational destitution. Finally, 
 after a time it turned round and condemned the 
 Church for not having furnished schools for these very 
 parishes. Another condition that has deprived many 
 schools of Government help was the area required for 
 a site. In very poor and populous manufacturing 
 parishes a quarter of an acre of land could only be 
 purchased for a large sum — a much larger sum than 
 those who were anxious to erect the school could 
 
74 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 afford to pay, and yet for a long time few exceptions 
 to this requirement were allowed to be made. Then 
 schools on leasehold sites were rigorously excluded 
 from assistance ; even leases for 999 years were 
 deemed insufficient. In mining districts covenants 
 about possible minerals under schools were insisted 
 upon, which in places where the whole of the land 
 was owned by colliery proprietors could not, or would 
 not, be conceded. Then, if eager builders laid a brick 
 upon the ground before the plans were approved by 
 the architect of the Department, their application for 
 assistance was rejected. The Committee of Council 
 insisted upon conformity to the rules it laid down 
 about width of room, ventilation, materials, &c., and 
 yet at the present day with some of the regula- 
 tions then required the Committee of Council finds 
 grievous fault, and would fain insist that the present 
 managers should alter the schools to the pattern 
 desired by their founders, which were compulsorily 
 changed in obedience to the demands of the Depart- 
 ment. Grievous as the conditions imposed upon 
 some schools in England were felt to be, they were 
 far outweighed by what Churchmen in Wales were 
 subjected to. There impediments were openly placed 
 in their path with the all but avowed object of limiting 
 Church education. Take as an example the case of 
 the parish of Bodedern, in the island of Anglesey, with 
 a population of about 1,000. A Church school for 
 about 150 children was projected in 1865 or 1866. 
 Upon the scheme being submitted to the Committee 
 of Council, and the usual help asked for, answer was 
 sent that no such school could be allowed without a 
 
VEXATIOUS GRIEVANCES 75 
 
 * conscience clause ' in the deeds. To this the pro- 
 moters assented. They were then told that under 
 the circumstances of the parish a Church school of 
 that size, even with a ' conscience clause,' could not 
 be permitted, but that Government help would be af- 
 forded to a school half the size without a ' conscience 
 clause.' To this resolution the promoters were 
 obliged to yield ; the smaller school was built, and 
 was speedily filled with children, amongst whom were 
 found those of several Dissenting preachers who lived 
 in the parish ; but no Nonconformist school was built, 
 and in consequence for several years many children 
 were deprived of the opportunity of being educated. 
 The grievance was systematised in parts of Wales 
 by the Committee of Council issuing a management 
 clause G in 1864 that required a certain portion of 
 the managers to be professed Dissenters, and thus 
 took away from those who desired to erect Church 
 schools the wish to do so. 
 
 That so much should have been accomplished by 
 Church people as was done previous to 1870 in the 
 face of the difficulties that were thrown in their way is 
 certainly a cause for surprise and gratitude. So far 
 from their being favoured, as was asserted by some 
 who were annoyed at the progress they were making, 
 and to which I have already called attention, it is 
 certain that during the reign of ' liberal ' administrations 
 their efforts were viewed with jealousy and dislike, 
 whilst the officials were ready to take credit to them- 
 selves for the success which was gained through their 
 instrumentality. 
 
 From different causes there grew up in the minds 
 
76 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 of men of very opposite schools of thought the con- 
 viction that it was desirable for the educational system 
 of the country to be carefully inquired into, so that, if 
 possible, progress might be made with less friction, 
 and that the blessing of education might be extended 
 to those parishes for which as yet no provision had 
 been made. In consequence a Royal Commission was 
 issued in 1858, consisting of the Duke of 
 Newcastle, who was chairman. Sir John T. 
 Coleridge, Revs. W. Charles Lake (late Dean of Dur- 
 ham), and W. Rogers, and Messrs. Goldwin Smith, 
 Nassau W. Senior, and Edward Miall. 
 
 Their commission ran thus : * Whereas an humble 
 address has been presented to us by the Knights, 
 Citizens, and Burgesses, and Commissioners of Shires 
 and Burghs in Parliament assembled, humbly be- 
 seeching us, that we would be graciously pleased 
 to issue a Commission to inquire into the present 
 state of popular education in England, and to con- 
 sider and report what measures, if any, are required 
 for the extension of sound and ch-eap elementary 
 instruction to all classes of the people,' we therefore 
 appoint the persons named above ' to inquire into the 
 present state of popular education in England, and to 
 consider and report what measures, if any, are required 
 for the extension of sound and cheap elementary 
 instruction to all classes of the people.' 
 
 The Report made by this Commission states the 
 following particulars with respect to the financial 
 position of the schools in 1861 : — 
 
 ' * The average emoluments of a certificated master, 
 
 * Report^ pp. 64, 65. 
 
TEACHERS' SALARIES IN 1861 77 
 
 including Government grants and all professional in- 
 come taken in 3,659 cases distributed over the whole 
 kingdom, amounted to 94/. 3^. yd. ; 2,102 had, in 
 addition, houses or house rent provided. The highest 
 average was 122/. ys. 2d., being the average salary of 
 masters in the schools of Protestant Dissenters in a 
 district including London. The lowest was 78/. 9^-. id., 
 being the average for Church schools in Wales. 
 
 'The average emoluments of 1,972 certificated 
 mistresses, of whom 1,035 had houses or house rent, 
 were 62/. 135-. lod., being nearly the same as those 
 of uncertificated masters, varying from 75/. 14^-. ^d. in 
 Church of England schools in Middlesex to 55/. 3^. ^d. 
 in Church of England schools in Cornwall, Devon, 
 Dorset, and Somerset. 
 
 *The average emoluments of 447 certificated 
 infant mistresses, of whom 314 had houses or house 
 rent, were 58/. 35-. 8<^., varying from 78/. 4^-. in De- 
 nominational and British schools in a district including 
 London, to 42/. 10^. in Roman Catholic schools in 
 thirty-five Welsh and English counties.' 
 
 All the schools from which these averages were 
 taken were in receipt of annual grants. In schools 
 visited for mere inspection, in which no annual grants 
 were received, masters received on an average 45/. 12s. ; 
 mistresses 28/. ys. gd. ; mistresses of infant schools 
 26/. 13J. 6d. 
 
 The average cost of the education of each child, 
 taking all the schools receiving Government help into 
 account, was i/. is. A^d.} and there is evidence that the 
 schools connected with the Protestant Dissenting 
 
 » Report, p. 68, 
 
78 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 denominations were attended by the children of parents 
 who paid higher fees than in schools connected with 
 the Church of England. 
 
 At that time, of the children who were attending 
 day schools,^ 76*2 per cent, were in Church schools ; 
 97 per cent, were in British schools; 5*52 per cent, 
 were in Roman Catholic schools ; 3*91 per cent, were 
 in Wesleyan schools; 2-i per cent, were in Congre- 
 gationalist schools, and 2*57 per cent, were in schools 
 of all other kinds. 
 
 I now come to the general conclusions arrived at 
 by this Commission, and the recommendations they 
 made, which I give at length. These are as follows : 
 
 2' I. One in every eight of the population was at 
 some time in some school or other. 
 
 * 2. Of the estimated number of 2 J millions who 
 ought to be at school, only 1,675,000 were in public 
 schools of any sort. 
 
 ' 3. Of the pupils in public schools, only one-half 
 were in schools receiving any grant, or under any sort 
 of inspection. 
 
 ' 4. The attendance in inspected schools was esti- 
 mated at only 74*35 per cent, of the scholars on the 
 books. 
 
 * 5. The number of assisted schools amounted to 
 6,897, containing 917,255 scholars; while 15,750 
 Denominational schools, and about 317 others, con- 
 taining together 691,393 scholars, were outside the 
 range of the operations of the Department. 
 
 * 6. Of the pupils in inspected schools not more 
 than one-fourth of the children were receiving a good 
 
 » Report, p. 55. 2 pp, J 3^ 14^ 15, 
 
THE ROYAL COMMISSION (1858) REPORT 79 
 
 education, the instruction given being too much 
 adapted to the elder scholars to the neglect of the 
 younger ones.' 
 
 Such, however, being in the view of the Commis- 
 sion of 1858 the facts of the case regarding the 
 number receiving elementary education, they pro- 
 ceeded further to form an estimate of its quality and 
 efficiency. They reported : — 
 
 ' I. That they had strong testimony to the 
 marked superiority of inspected over uninspected 
 schools, and to the stimulus which inspection supplies, 
 subject to the remark that inspections often lead the 
 teachers to dwell on matters of memory rather than 
 of reasoning, and rather on details than on general 
 principles, or on general results, and also subject to 
 the further remark as to the inconvenience of differences 
 in the standards adopted by different inspectors ; and 
 also that, while inspection quickens the intellectual 
 activity and raises the condition of the whole school, 
 the inspectors are tempted to attend to the state of 
 the upper more than of the junior classes, and to 
 estimate the whole school accordingly. 
 
 * 2. That, even in the best schools, only about one- 
 fourth of the boys attained the highest class, and 
 were considered by the inspector to be " successfully 
 educated." 
 
 * 3. That there was a tendency in teachers to neglect 
 both the more elementary subjects and the younger 
 scholars, and that these last appeared to be capable 
 of receiving a far better teaching in reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic than had hitherto been given to them. 
 
 * 4. That the religious and moral influence of the 
 
8o ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 public schools appeared to be very great^to be even 
 greater than their intellectual influence— that in the 
 opinion of the Commission a set of good schools 
 civilise the whole neighbourhood, and that this — the 
 most important function of the school — was that 
 which they had best performed. 
 
 ' 5. That in point of literary instruction it would 
 be a mistake to suppose that the existing system had 
 failed, because it had hitherto successfully educated 
 too small a proportion of the scholars. It had 
 succeeded in establishing a good type of education. 
 In good schools the senior classes had turned out 
 scholars really well taught. What was still required 
 was to extend this type of education to a larger 
 body of inferior schools and inferior scholars.' 
 
 Upon these remarks on the then existing state of 
 elementary education the Royal Commission of 1886 
 remarks : ' It is by no means universally admitted that 
 the proportion of scholars brought under the influence 
 of effective education was rightly estimated by the 
 Commission of 1858. Mr. Cumin stated in evidence 
 before us that he thought the Commission had over- 
 stated the numbers under education. Mr. Stewart, 
 Mr. Sharpe, and Mr. Matthew Arnold, all of 
 whom were actively employed at the time as H.M. 
 Inspectors of Schools, concurred, on the other hand, 
 in stating that they could not accept the conclusion 
 of the Commission, that even in good schools not 
 more than one-fourth of the scholars were successfully 
 educated.' 'This conclusion,' Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 said, ' was accepted without sufficient proof.' 
 
 After stating the conclusions at which they had 
 
'PLAN' OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 1858 81 
 
 arrived as to the extent and quality of existing 
 elementary education in England and Wales, the 
 Commissioners of 1858 proceeded to give in detail the 
 ' plan ' which they recommended for extensive altera- 
 tions and additions to the system then in force, and 
 in their concluding remarks on this head they stated 
 that in proposing to enable the Council Office to 
 extend its operations over the whole country, they 
 wished to preserve the leading features of the exist- 
 ing system, and that they especially adhered to the 
 principles to which it was, in their opinion, indebted 
 for no small part of its success, viz. : — 
 
 1. Non-interference in the religious training which 
 is given by different denominations of Christians. 
 
 2. Absence of all central control over the direct 
 management of schools, adding that it might become 
 the duty of the Council to make provision for ensuring 
 to the children of the poor the benefit of education 
 * without exposing their parents to a violation of their 
 religious convictions.' 
 
 They recommended that all grants from the 
 Parliamentary fund should be paid directly to the 
 managers, and not as before, in part to the teachers 
 and pupil teachers, and that these should look hence- 
 forth exclusively to the managers for their remunera- 
 tion ; they further presented a general plan for 
 modifying and extending the existing system of 
 grants in elementary schools. Its general principles 
 were described as follows : — 
 
 I. That all assistance given for annual main- 
 tenance of schools shall be simplified and reduced to 
 grants of two kinds. ' 
 
 F 
 
82 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 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 county and borough boards 
 of education hereinafter described. 
 
 2. That no school shall be entitled to these grants 
 which does not fulfil the following general conditions : 
 
 The school shall have been registered at the oflRce 
 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, and properly drained and ventilated 
 and supplied with offices ; and the principal school- 
 room shall contain at least eight square feet of super- 
 ficial area for each child in average attendance. 
 
 3. That there shall be paid upon the average 
 daily attendance of the children during the year 
 preceding the inspector's visit, as the Committee of 
 Council shall fix from time to time, the sum of not 
 less than 5.^. 6d. nor more than 6s, in schools con- 
 taining less than sixty children, and not less than 
 4$-. 6d. nor more than 5^. in schools containing more 
 than sixty children, for each child, according to. the 
 opinion formed by the inspectors of the discipline, 
 efficiency, and general character of the school. . 
 
THE PROPOSED GRANTS TO SCHOOLS 83 
 
 4. That there shall also be paid an additional 
 grant of 2s. 6d. a child on as many of the average 
 number of children in attendance throughout the 
 year as have been under the instruction of properly 
 qualified pupil teachers, or assistant teachers, allowing 
 thirty children for each pupil teacher, and sixty for 
 each assistant teacher. 
 
 5. That every school which applies for aid out 
 of the county rate shall be examined by a county 
 examiner within twelve months after the application 
 in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and that any one 
 of H.M. Inspectors of Schools, under whose inspec- 
 tion the school will fall, shall be entitled to be present 
 at the examination. 
 
 6. That, subject to recommendation 7, the man- 
 agers of all schools fulfilling the conditions specified 
 in Rule 3 shall be entitled to be paid out of the 
 county rate a sum ranging from 22s. 6d. to 21s. 
 for every child who has attended the school during 
 140 days in the year preceding the day of examina- 
 tion, and who passes an examination before the 
 examiner in reading, writing, arithmetic, and who, if 
 a girl, also passes an examination in plain needlework. 
 That scholars under seven years of age shall not be 
 examined, but the amount of grant shall be deter- 
 mined by the average number of children in daily 
 attendance, 20s. being paid on account of each child. 
 
 7. That - the combined grants from the central 
 fund and the county board shall not exceed the fees 
 and subscriptions, or 15^. per child on the average 
 attendance. 
 
 . 8. That in every county or division of a county 
 
84 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 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 com- 
 mission 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. 
 
 9. That in corporate towns, which at the census 
 last preceding contained more than 40,000 inhabit- 
 ants, 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 power of a county 
 board of education. 
 
 10. That where there is a borough board of edu- 
 cation, the grant which would have been paid out of 
 the county rate shall be paid out of the borough 
 rates or other municipal funds. 
 
 11. That 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 
 
OBJECTIONS TO THE 'PLAN' 85 
 
 from the commission of the peace and from the 
 chairmen and vice-chairmen of the boards of guardians 
 and the other members. The vacancy in the borough 
 boards of education shall be filled up by the town 
 council at a meeting to be held one calendar month 
 from the day of the vacancies made. 
 
 12. That an inspector of schools, to be appointed 
 by the Committee of Council, shall be a member of 
 each county and borough board. 
 
 13. That 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. 
 
 It is sometimes well to see what was said at the 
 time in opposition to a scheme by an expert, as it 
 enables us to some extent to gauge what were the 
 possibilities at the time of resisting the new proposals. 
 I therefore quote objections to the Commissioners' 
 Report urged at the time by Sir James Kay Shuttle- 
 worth in a letter to Lord Granville, the then President 
 of the Committee of Council. With respect to the 
 points in which the new proposals differed from the 
 plans which he himself had introduced, he says : 
 
 ^ ' The proposals of the Commissioners for the 
 consolidation of the annual grants into three capita- 
 tion grants are liable to serious objections.' These 
 three grants have been fully described on pp. 82, Z^. 
 
 * The Commissioners report that the present pay- 
 ments from the Parliamentary grant for certificated 
 teachers amount to ^s. ^\d. per head on the average 
 attendance of scholars in Church of England inspected 
 
 * Fotir Periods of Education, pp. 563-565. 
 
86 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 schools, to 3^. id. per head in British inspected 
 schools, and to A^s. /!^d. per head in denominational 
 schools ; and for pupil teachers (who are now em- 
 ployed in the proportion of one to every fifty scholars), 
 the grant is at the rate of 6s. 2|^. per head. 
 
 *A proposal, therefore, to raise the capitation 
 grant, on account of the employment of certificated 
 teachers, from 3^. ^^d. to 5^-. 6d.^ and at the same 
 time to depress the rate of grant for pupil teg-chers 
 from what would be lOi". under the present system to 
 2s. 6d., ought not to have proceeded from a Com- 
 mission which approves the pupil teacher system so 
 heartily that it proposes to insist on an increase of 
 more than one-third of their relative numbers. The 
 managers are called on to decide whether they will 
 incur a charge of los. per scholar for a grant of 
 2s. 6d. per scholar. Throughout England and Wales 
 more than three-fifths of the children attend the 
 same school less than two years, and more than two- 
 fifths less than one year. If, therefore, it be replied 
 that the managers might make up the difference by 
 the fourth capitation grant proposed by the Com- 
 missioners for every child who may pass an ex- 
 amination in reading, writing, and arithmetic, the 
 answer is that there would obviously be more risk of 
 failure than of success, since the migration of scholars 
 is so frequent. 
 
 * The capitation grant of 20.$'. on the average 
 attendance of children in infant schools under seven 
 is to be given without any examination, or, so far as 
 I can perceive, any other condition than the attend- 
 ance of the child in a building of a certain size. 
 
THE REVISED CODE 87 
 
 which can be reported to be not unhealthy. This 
 mode of administration would be novel, and, if 
 expedient, might save all trouble but the keeping of 
 registers. If the managers of infant schools are 
 entitled to this confidence, good ground would have 
 to be shown why it should not be extended to the 
 managers of schools having children above seven 
 years of age.' 
 
 With some few alterations the recommendations 
 of the Commission were approved, and in July 1861 
 effect was given to these recommendations 
 by certain minutes of the Committee of the 
 Privy Council on Education. Mr. Lowe, Vice-Presi- 
 dent of the Committee of Council on Education, then 
 proposed regulations for Government help which have 
 been known as the Revised Code. By this Code the 
 system that had been acted upon of assigning increase 
 of salaries to the head teachers according to a fixed 
 scale, and the payment of pupil teachers by the 
 Department, were done away with, and for the future 
 the schools were to receive one grant, and the man- 
 agers were to be responsible for all expenses : the 
 teachers were no longer to be regarded as civil servants, 
 and all the provisions for securing pensions to thern 
 at the expiration of a certain period of service were 
 repealed for those who entered the profession after 
 the promulgation of the Code, the rights of existing 
 teachers being reserved. A sum of 4^-. 6d. was for 
 the future to be paid to the school managers for each 
 child in average attendance during the year, and 2s. Sd. 
 was to be paid for each child that had made 200 at- 
 tendances during the year, and who passed a satisfactory 
 
88 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 examination before H.M. Inspector in each of the 
 subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic. The pro- 
 posal of a grant out of the county or borough rate was 
 dropped. It was made a condition for obtaining the 
 grant that H.M. Inspector should be satisfied with 
 the school building and apparatus, and a certificated 
 teacher was to be in charge of the school. The 
 Government grant was in no case to exceed 1 5^. for 
 each child in average attendance, or the amount 
 raised by the children's payments and voluntary sub- 
 scriptions. The children were to be grouped in 
 six standards ; no child was to be examined more 
 than once in the same standard. The standards were 
 an elaborate scheme of the attainments expected from 
 each child in the rudimentary subjects, and showed 
 the amount of knowledge of these subjects which 
 each child was expected to acquire in each year of 
 his school life. Moreover, it was determined practi- 
 cally to confiscate all endowments that had been given 
 for the support of the school, as the amount realised 
 from them was to be treated as part of the Government 
 grant. There was an equally elaborate scheme of 
 standards for children attending school in the evening, 
 with a lower scale of payments. Provision was also 
 made for children who attended school one-half of 
 the day and were at work during the other half, and 
 who were named ' half-timers.' If a child were under 
 six years of age the grant was to be 6s. 6<^., in 
 addition to the average attendance grant, subject to 
 a report by the inspector that such child was instructed 
 suitably to its age, and in a manner not to interfere 
 with the instruction of the older children. The Code 
 
THE ORIGIN OF CODES 89 
 
 ■ ■ 7 ■ ' ' ~"^ 
 
 also contained a number of requirements with respect 
 to the building, the school appliances, the qualifica- 
 tions of the teachers, and a number of smaller matters. 
 
 In the early days of the Committee of Council on 
 Education its relations to the schools in connection 
 with it were regulated by * Minutes,' which were issued 
 by the Department from time to time as occasion 
 arose. In the course of years the number of these 
 ' Minutes ' was considerable, and, as they were scat- 
 tered about in the Reports of the Department, they 
 were not always easy to find. In i860 Mr. Lowe 
 had them collected, and they thus became, for the 
 first time, a Code. When, therefore, an entirely new 
 system was adopted, most of these had to be repealed, 
 and new regulations introduced : these became the 
 Revised Code which I have been describing. 
 
 It would seem as though Mr. Robert Lowe, who 
 was then Vice-President of the Education Depart- 
 ment, grudged the money that was being spent on 
 popular education, and was determined to diminish 
 the amount paid towards its cost from Imperial 
 sources as much as he dared. It would have been 
 unpopular to affirm this ; he therefore urged that his 
 plan would tend to the improvement of the education 
 given. Whilst in all that he said and did he appeared 
 to regard the founders and supporters of schools as 
 sharp-sighted tradesmen, who needed to be dealt with 
 on the strictest business principles, and not as phil- 
 anthropists who were making sacrifices of time and 
 money for the benefit of their poorer fellow-country- 
 men, it may be well to show at greater length what he 
 thought by an extract from his speech in the House 
 
90 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 of Commons on February 13, 1862:^ 'The House 
 will perhaps allow me to point out the advantages of 
 the scheme which we propose. In the first place, 
 unlike the reports of the inspectors, it does not deal 
 with classes, but with individuals ; it does not deal 
 out sweeping and ruinous penalties, but enforces small 
 ones only. A particular child will be examined, and 
 the grant in his case will depend upon this one issue. 
 The officer therefore will not be deterred from doing 
 what is right by a dread of consequences, because he 
 will not see the consequences until he comes to add 
 up the results of the examination. I look upon this 
 as a great advantage in the new system. We find 
 by experience that impunity is often secured to crime 
 by making the punishment too severe, and the same 
 impunity may be secured to ignorance and inefficient 
 teaching unless we take care to make the loss as 
 small as we can, not by dealing with classes, but with 
 individual cases. Another advantage of the new 
 system is that it gives the managers almost unfettered 
 freedom in regulating their schools as they please, 
 except with regard to the employment of certificated 
 and pupil teachers. Some of these gentlemen do not 
 seem grateful for the privilege, but I believe that when 
 once they have had experience of their freedom they 
 will not regret it. 
 
 * The principle which we now seek to enforce is a 
 searching one. It exposes the faults of the system. 
 The threat of enforcing it has elicited from school 
 managers confessions which I should have thought 
 nothing but the rack would have extorted— confessions 
 * Hansard, vol. clxv., pp. 241 -243. 
 
MR. LOWE'S SCHEME 
 
 of bad attendance on the part of the children, of in- 
 efficient teaching, and of all the evils which have been 
 paraded for the last six months before the eyes of the 
 public as reasons why we should shrink from applying 
 the only effectual remedy — individual examination. 
 The new Code will make the interest of the school 
 in matters of attendance and instruction identical 
 with the interests of the public, which is that the 
 children should attend as regularly as possible, and 
 that they should learn as much as possible. The 
 interest of the school will be that the teaching of 
 the school shall be sufficiently good to satisfy the 
 inspector, and that as many children shall be got 
 together as shall satisfy the terms of the capitation 
 grant, and that interest, which is the public interest, 
 will pervade the schools. Then look at the manner 
 in which the work will be tested, and look also at the 
 opportunity which the parties concerned will have of 
 appreciating each other's merits. The master, by 
 means of the new system, will be able to appreciate 
 his own labours. He will have the opportunity of 
 judging how far his methods of teaching are successful, 
 and whether the time he devotes to the work is 
 sufficient for the purpose. To him it will be an ever- 
 recurring lesson, and the best possible test. Then 
 the children will be kept in a state of emulation in 
 learning, which is far from being the case at this 
 moment. The managers, on the other hand, will 
 have an opportunity of judging of the capacity of the 
 master ; he will be subjected to a crucial test ; if he 
 does well or ill the results will show themselves ac- 
 cordingly ; and he will be likely, therefore, always to 
 
92 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 do his uttermost to keep up his credit. The Govern- 
 ment, again, will have much the same hold over 
 managers, and the public money will be given, not 
 to the persons they employ in the schools, or according 
 merely to the number of children who attend, but it 
 will be according to the results which the teachers 
 and the attendance of the pupils have combined to 
 produce. Moreover, the new system will give very 
 important assistance in the education of the children. 
 Our public schools now spend some money every 
 year in examinations, and so in the present instance 
 these examinations will operate not merely as a test 
 in making grants of public money, but will really 
 increase the general efficiency of the school, and thus 
 render important assistance to it on the part of 
 Government. Lastly, the new Code will for the first 
 time place the education grant really and effectually 
 under the control of Parliament, and will for the first 
 time place it in a perfectly intelligible position. 
 Henceforth it will not depend on complex regulations ; 
 it will be guided by principles which anybody may 
 understand, and Parliament will be able to regulate 
 at its pleasure — which has never been the case hitherto 
 — the amount of money to be granted. Sir, I think 
 I have shown that there are grave defects in the 
 existing system of education, that it is of an ex- 
 perimental character, and is unfitted to be the 
 permanent educational system of annual grants. So, 
 taking denominational education based on religion as 
 the basis of our plan, we are about to substitute for 
 the vague, indefinite test which now exists, a defi- 
 nite, clear, and precise test, so that the public may 
 
'PAYMENT BY RESULTS' 93 
 
 know exactly what consideration they get for their 
 money.' 
 
 It is well to remind those who did not take an 
 active part in educational matters at that time what 
 the author of the Revised Code or system of payment 
 by results, as it has always been called, said in its 
 favour when Parliament was induced to accept it. 
 For in its working it proved a very modified success, 
 if it can be called a success at all. If, on the one 
 hand, it ensured more attention to the dull and care- 
 less children, so as to secure that they should scrape 
 through some of, if not all, the subjects in which they 
 would be examined, on the other hand it caused the 
 clever children, who could be safely trusted to satisfy 
 the requirements of H.M. Inspector, to receive much 
 less attention from their teachers. And, besides this, 
 it introduced a mercenary spirit into the school, which 
 had not previously been found there, every teacher 
 being eager to secure the largest Government grant 
 that he could. When payment for extra subjects 
 was introduced, this evil assumed still more formidable 
 proportions, as the extra subjects chosen were not 
 those which would be most useful to the scholars in 
 after life, but those which promised the largest amount 
 of gain with the smallest expenditure of trouble. 
 Moreover, as I have already said, instead of treating the 
 managers of schools as friends, who were making con- 
 siderable sacrifices of time and money to promote the 
 education of the poor, it seemed to regard them as persons 
 eager to make a profit out of what they were professing 
 to do on philanthropic grounds : as, instead of allowing 
 the State to contribute towards the cost of the educa- 
 
94 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 tional machinery provided, it limited its assistance to a 
 payment for results achieved, and in numberless cases 
 these results were practically beyond the power of 
 the managers to obtain, whilst in all cases their 
 responsibility was necessarily limited to providing the 
 machinery requisite to secure success. This result 
 was foreseen at the time by practical men who had 
 personal knowledge of what was being done in 
 elementary schools, and of the children who attended 
 them. Moreover, the scheme was based upon the 
 assumption that what might hold good with respect 
 to the children of educated parents, who were sur- 
 rounded with the social and educational advantages 
 which such parents could provide, applied with equal 
 force to the children of uneducated parents, who could 
 furnish their children with none of those advantages. 
 It may be well to compare the " language of 
 the author of the scheme just quoted, who was an 
 able, highly educated, and intellectual doctrinaire, 
 who had probably never seen the inside of an 
 elementary school, nor had any personal knowledge of 
 the class of persons for whom he was legislating, with 
 the opinion expressed at the time by Sir James Kay 
 Shuttleworth, who, as a physician in Manchester, and 
 subsequently a poor-law inspector, had come into 
 intimate relations with the labouring population of 
 that great town, and who afterwards, as Secretary of 
 the Education Department, had accurate knowledge 
 concerning elementary schools and the children who 
 attended them. Of these last named he gives the 
 following account : * * The manufacturing districts of 
 
 '^ Four Periods of Education y'^'^.1%1-1%'^; note. 
 
LANCASHIRE AND YORKSHIRE SCHOOLS 95 
 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire have been fed by a constant 
 immigration from the wolds of North Yorkshire and 
 the Border, and from the moors of Cumberland, 
 Westmoreland, Derbyshire, the Pennine Chain, and 
 Wales. A family enters a manufacturing village ; 
 the children are of various school ages from seven to 
 eleven. They probably have never lived but in a 
 hovel ; have never been in the street of a village or 
 a town ; are unacquainted with common usages of 
 social life ; perhaps never saw a book ; are bewildered 
 by the rapid motion of crowds ; confused in an as- 
 semblage of scholars. They have to be taught to 
 stand upright — to walk without a slouching gait — to 
 sit without crouching like a sheep dog. They have 
 to learn some decency in their skin, hair, and dress. 
 They are commonly either cowed or sullen, or wild, 
 fierce, and obstinate. In the street they are often in 
 a tumult of rude agitation. In the school they are 
 probably classed with scholars some years younger 
 than themselves. They have no habits of attention, 
 and are distracted by the babel of sounds about them. 
 The effort of abstraction required to connect a sound 
 with a letter is at first impossible to them. Their 
 parents are almost equally brutish. They have lived 
 solitary lives in some wild region, where the husband 
 has been a shepherd, or hind, or quarryman, or miner, 
 or turf-cutter, or has won a precarious livelihood as a 
 carrier, driver of loaded lime ponies, or poacher. The 
 pressing wants of a growing family have induced 
 them to accept the offer of some agent from a mill. 
 From personal experience of many years, I know 
 that such children as these form a large portion of 
 
96 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 the scholars which the schools of the cotton and 
 woollen districts have to civilise and Christianise. A 
 large part of that better work has often been ac- 
 complished, and the benumbed brain has been 
 wakened from its torpidity, and fitted for the re- 
 ception of knowledge which there has not been time 
 to give. The half-time system in factories, and the 
 rule that no child under eight shall be employed in 
 them, have been in operation little more than twenty 
 years (in 1861). Before this time the factory children 
 of settled families were as brutish as they still are in 
 mining districts. The children employed in bleach 
 and print works have had only a limited and almost 
 worthless protection from too early and excessive 
 labour. 
 
 * A different kind of brutishness is shown by a 
 large class of scholars in the most degraded parts of 
 great cities. A London child, living in a street of 
 brothels and thieves' dens, with parents leading 
 abandoned lives, spends his day in the kennel among 
 sharp-witted, restless little creatures like himself. 
 He is his own master. His powers of observation 
 are singularly acute ; his powers of decision rapid ; 
 his will energetic. He is known as " the arab of the 
 street." He learns a great deal of evil. Perhaps he 
 is an accomplished thief or beggar, or picks up a 
 precarious living by holding horses, sweeping a cross- 
 ing, or costermongering. Such children have of late 
 years been netted in shoals — got into schools, have 
 been won, tamed, and in some degree taught. But 
 is it not a mischievous fallacy to say that the work 
 done is to be measured by the proficiency of such 
 
SCHOOLS IN THE POTTERY DISTRICTS c^-j 
 
 children in reading, writing, and arithmetic ? All 
 that has been done has been done against wind and 
 tide. At home — misery, drunkenness, sullen despair, 
 or the irritability of a dissolute life, drive the child 
 into the streets. Bad example lends its corruption 
 to the foulness of the street of stews and hiding- 
 holes. Are twenty scattered weeks, even if repeated 
 in three successive years, enough to get rid of the 
 wild untamed barbarism of such children, and to 
 graft on this civilisation that amount of knowledge 
 of reading, writing, and arithmetic which the Com- 
 missioners say is so easy.-* 
 
 * What has to be done in the case of the children 
 who have hitherto worked, without protection and 
 without instruction, in mines ? From eight years of 
 age they have sat eight hours daily in the black 
 darkness, with their feet in the mud or running water, 
 and the dripping roof of the mine overhead — opening 
 and shutting the ventilating doors — or as they grew 
 older dragging the corves or waggons. 
 
 ' Take Mr. Norris's account of the life of a potter's 
 child up to the age of apprenticeship (p. 1 84 Com- 
 missioners' Report) : — " At eighteen months or two 
 years old he is sent to one of the dames who gain a 
 livelihood by taking care of young children whose 
 mothers are at the factory. There, from seven in the 
 morning to eight or nine at night, he is stowed away 
 in a small room, without exercise or change of air, 
 predisposing the constitution to consumption, which 
 is a common malady in the pottery towns. This 
 continues, on an average, for four years. He is then, 
 at five-and-a-half or six years old, sent perhaps to 
 
98 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 the National School, where he stays one, or two, or 
 at the most, three years, but during the latter part of 
 the time he is sure to be kept away very much, to 
 act as an occasional substitute for some other boy 
 who is at work. At eight or nine (or earlier if his 
 parents are drunken or improvident, often at six or 
 seven) he begins to work regularly for a journeyman 
 potter, turning his jigger (the potter's wheel, to which 
 steam seems never to have been applied), and earning 
 \s. to 2s. a week. In a year or two a quick boy will 
 begin " handling " (making handles for cups, &c.) or 
 figuring, and earn from 2s. to 4^-. But by this time a 
 great change has come over him — he has been kept 
 at work 1 2 or 13 hours each day, and so, even if dis- 
 posed to continue his school studies, has little time 
 to do so ; consequently he now reads badly, and 
 writes worse ; and, in short, nearly all he acquired at 
 school is forgotten." ' 
 
 A second objection to the Revised Code, arising 
 from the frequent migration of children to fresh 
 schools, has already been dealt with, and need not be 
 repeated. 
 
 A further objection is found in the migratory 
 state of a portion of the population ; bricklayers, 
 stonemasons, and others move about from parish to 
 parish as the opportunities of work require ; then 
 dissolute, idle, apathetic parents cannot be made to 
 send their children regularly to school, however vigo- 
 rous the school authorities may be ; and to fine those 
 who are endeavouring to do a good and much-needed 
 philanthropic work in a disinterested way, for not 
 accomplishing what they are endeavouring to do with 
 
OBJECTIONS TO THE REVISED CODE 99 
 
 all their might, but which is beyond their power, is 
 obviously unjust All this was urged against the 
 Revised Code, but urged in vain. 
 
 The condition of the agricultural and other popu- 
 lations in the South of England, and in some parts of 
 the North, was very different from that of the rapidly 
 developing manufacturing districts in Lancashire and 
 Yorkshire. When the number of parishioners in- 
 creased slowly, and there was a resident clergyman 
 to look after their wants, provision for the education 
 of the children was made with comparative ease, and a 
 certain amount of regular attendance at school was 
 secured. But in places like Middlesbrough, that was 
 changed in a few years from a hamlet with less than 300 
 inhabitants to a town with more than 30,000, the case 
 was very different, and there were many places of a 
 somewhat similar kind. And the task was made 
 considerably harder by the difficulties that had been 
 placed in the way of Church people who desired to 
 make provision for the spiritual wants of these popu- 
 lations, when the places they inhabited began to 
 develop; for up to the year 18 19 no church could 
 be erected in England or Wales without a special Act 
 of Parliament, and that to most people was an insuper- 
 able barrier. So that when greater liberty was af- 
 forded them, and new parishes could be formed with 
 resident clergy to look after the moral and spiritual 
 wants of the people, there was so much leeway to 
 make up, that the task seemed almost hopeless. 
 
 The effect of the Revised Code in checking the zeal 
 of good people who desired to promote the education 
 of the masses of the population was great. The 
 
 63 
 
loo ELEMENT A RY ED UCA TION 
 
 increase of school accommodation went on at a much 
 less rapid rate. The Report of the Committee of 
 Council on Education for 1 862 says : * With regard 
 to the smaller number of schools built in 1862 than 
 in 1 86 1, namely, 159 instead of 206, it is to be 
 observed that the supply of school premises which 
 has been provided during the last twenty-five years 
 by means of these grants must have gone far to meet 
 so much of the demand as does not depend upon 
 increase of population. Within that period (1846 to 
 1862) 4,109 new schoolhouses have been built, com- 
 prising 6,312 principal schoolrooms (exclusively of 
 class-rooms) and 2,525 teachers' residences ; 1,957 
 schoolhouses have been enlarged or improved. New 
 accommodation of an excellent kind has thus been 
 created for 793,399 scholars, at a cost of 3,957,414/., 
 of which 1,268,261/. was granted by the State, and 
 2,689,153/ provided by private liberality. All this 
 mass of property is held under titles, and settled upon 
 trusts, which have been duly examined by their 
 lordships' counsel, and copies of the approved plans 
 and trust deeds are lodged at the Council Office. 
 
 ' After such progress we have thought it our duty 
 to examine strictly the reasons alleged for building 
 new schools before committing ourselves to aid any 
 such undertaking with a grant of public money.' 
 
 The results of the Revised Code on the spread of 
 education are thus described in the Report of the Edu- 
 cation Commission of 1886. 'We attribute,' says 
 the Report of the Council for 1862, * the reduction of 
 expenditure under the head of building to reduction of 
 rate, exclusion of normal schools, satisfaction of de- 
 
TEACHERS' PENSIONS loi 
 
 mands,and (in some degree) to stricter administration.' 
 But in the next year, when no such special causes of 
 decline were operating, the grant again fell from 
 774,743/. to 721,386/., and this was explained to be 
 more directly the consequence of the new system of 
 payment by results. In 1864 the grant had further 
 fallen to 655,036/, and in 1865 a still further reduction 
 occurred of 20,000/ Thus the promise of Mr. Lowe 
 to the House of Commons, that education under his 
 system of administering the grant should, if not effi- 
 cient, at least be cheap, bade fair to be realised, so far 
 at least as the second of these alternatives was con- 
 cerned, since the cost to the country of the annual 
 grant steadily diminished.' 
 
 Another part of the scheme was to divest the 
 teachers of the position of civil servants, and so to 
 deprive them of all claim to a pension. Few changes 
 have worked more inconvenience and injury to the 
 efficiency of schools than this. For after a certain 
 period of life teachers become incapacitated by infir- 
 mities or ill-health from thoroughly discharging their 
 duties. Moreover, retirement from school work is 
 necessary at an earlier age than it is from other pro- 
 fessions. Too often the managers have had before 
 them the unpleasant alternatives either of sacrificing 
 the efficiency of the school in order to preserv^e a 
 livelihood to the teacher, or else of dismissing an old, 
 and possibly a much-valued, servant without being able 
 to secure to him any income upon which he can live. 
 
 It would be amusing if it were not so sad to com- 
 pare what Mr. Lowe said about the sufficiency of school 
 supply with what has been said and written about it since 
 
I02 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 1870. Mr. Lowe said it was sufficient; a few years 
 later it was shown that existing schools would not 
 accommodate more than half the children who ought 
 to have been attending them. 
 
 It was no doubt largely owing to this strong 
 discouragement of providing more school accommoda- 
 tion that the cry of the insufficiency of such pro- 
 vision in 1870 arose, and caused the passing of the 
 Education Act of that year. If private benevolence 
 had been stimulated instead of being frowned upon 
 by the Education Department in 1862, a large 
 amount of the deficiency in school places would have 
 been supplied, and the country would have been 
 spared a considerable, unnecessary, and extravagant 
 expenditure on popular education which it has been, 
 and is being, compelled to furnish. But Mr. Lowe had 
 very little sympathy with the labouring classes ; and 
 it is clear that he had no prevision of the growing 
 feeling in the country in favour of greater facilities 
 being furnished for placing the opportunity of good 
 elementary instruction within the reach of all. Nor 
 had he at all realised the special difficulty there would 
 be in making such provision, in consequence of the 
 deep-seated jealousy on the part of Nonconformists, 
 excited by the great exertions and sacrifices that 
 Church people had made to promote it. The inculca- 
 tion of definite religious teaching on Church lines was 
 an abhorrence to them ; and, to judge from their 
 actions, one would be inclined to think that they 
 regarded it as a less evil for children to grow up 
 uninstructed than for them to learn the Church 
 Catechism. Politicians of certain schools were dis- 
 
MR. CORRY'S BILL] 103 
 
 posed to favour the same view. They imagined it 
 was possible to give religious teaching of a satisfactory 
 kind when all instruction in doctrines about which 
 the sects differed from the Church was excluded, so 
 that children might be instructed in such parts of the 
 Gospel as all professed to believe without sacrificing 
 all practical effect of religion on their life. They 
 seemed unable to realise that under such a system the 
 morality only inculcated by our Divine Lord could be 
 taught, whilst no mention was made of the Divine 
 assistance without which He had expressly said it 
 was impossible to fulfil what was commanded. For 
 concerning the manner of imparting Divine grace all 
 the Protestant sects differed widely from the Church, 
 and it was because of this that they objected to the 
 Church Catechism. 
 
 The next considerable change was proposed by a 
 Conservative Government, when Lord Derby was 
 Premier, and Mr. Corry Vice-President of the 
 Council. On February 20, 1867, Mr. Corry 
 introduced a Bill which I cannot better describe than 
 in the words of the Education Commission of 1886. 
 Its objects were : — 
 
 • I. 'To relieve the proportionately larger expenses 
 of small schools. 
 
 2. ' To encourage the presentation of a greater 
 number of scholars for examination in elementary 
 subjects and in standards better corresponding to 
 their respective ages. 
 
 3. *To encourage instruction beyond the elemen- 
 tary subjects. 
 
 V ' Report, pp. 20, 21. 
 
104 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 4. *To increase the proportion of teachers to 
 scholars, by requiring a greater number of apprentices, 
 and this not only for the purpose of directly pro- 
 moting the objects previously specified, but also for 
 the purp'ose of providing a more adequate supply of 
 candidates for training as teachers. 
 
 * As a means of effecting these objects an increased 
 grant was offered beyond the ordinary existing rate, 
 which, when it came to be fully earned, would 
 amount to 8/., on the following conditions viz. — that 
 the staff should exceed the minimum in a fixed ratio ; 
 that two out of the three passes in the rudiments 
 were secured ; that one-fifth of the passes were 
 obtained in a standard higher than the fourth ; and 
 that one specific subject at least was taught in 
 addition to the subjects required in the Revised 
 Code. This introduction of payment for teaching an 
 additional (technically specific) subject has since been 
 a good deal extended ; it is therefore well to notice 
 its first appearance in the Code. In addition, each 
 Queen's Scholarship obtained by a male pupil teacher 
 was to bring to the school a pecuniary reward ^ of 
 10/. or 5/., according to the class taken ; and on the 
 attainment of a certificate by such pupil teacher 
 after residence in a training college, a further bonus 
 of 8/. or 5/., subject to the same condition, was to be 
 paid to the school in which the pupil teacher had 
 been apprenticed. An upward movement in the 
 grant soon resulted from the combined effects of the 
 searching processes of examination enforced by 
 
 * These grants were made because the number of pupil teachers 
 had been declining, and it was considered essential to increase it. 
 
THE PARENT OF MR. FORSTER'S BILL 105 
 
 the Revised Code, and of the Hberal encouragement 
 to go forward offered by Mr. Corry's Minute.' 
 
 In the following year, Lord Robert Montagu being 
 Vice-President of the Council, Mr. Lowe's rule for 
 
 confiscating the endowment enjoyed by any 
 
 school, by reckoning it as part of the Govern- 
 ment grant, was practically repealed, the Minute 
 running thus : ' Annual grants to endowed schools are 
 reduced by the amount of their income from endow- 
 ments ; but the reduction is suspended as long as the 
 grant and the endowment together do not make a 
 total sum exceeding the rate of 1 5^. per scholar, ac- 
 cording to the average number in attendance in the 
 year defined by Article 17.' 
 
 ^ ' Among the measures brought forward, which, 
 during the years 1862-70 had been familiarising the 
 public mind with ideas that were to find a leading 
 place in the legislation of 1 870, was the " Education 
 of Poor Bill," which was brought into the House of 
 
 Commons in 1867 by Mr. Bruce, Mr. W. E. 
 
 Forster, and Mr. Algernon Egerton, and 
 which, indeed, must be regarded as the parent of Mr. 
 Forster's Bill of 1 870. There can be as little doubt that 
 the real, though not so modern or so well remembered, 
 original of the Bill of 1867 was the " Manchester and 
 Salford Boroughs Education Bill," which was brought 
 into the House of Commons in the Session of 1851-52 
 by Mr. Entwistle. Mr. Egerton, whose name stood on 
 the back of the later Bill, was the personal representative 
 of the earnest and influential union of the friends of 
 education in Manchester, which brought forward this 
 
 • Repoi't of the Education Commission ^1886, pp. 20, 21. 
 
io6 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 earlier Bill. Several who had taken an active part 
 in preparing the Bill of 185 1 still remained ready to 
 lend their best help to any honest endeavour to solve 
 the educational problem of the nation. These, joined 
 by other earnest friends of education, put the ma- 
 chinery into motion which, in 1867, brought forward 
 the Bill of Messrs. Bruce, Forster, and Egerton. It 
 is not possible, indeed, to read the projected Bill of 
 1 85 1 without recognising that it contains the sub- 
 stance of the Bill of 1867. The chief points of 
 coincidence between the two may be noted. Both 
 were devised in Manchester ; both had reference to 
 individual boroughs (or districts) ; in both the local 
 authority was to be the district committee elected 
 by the Town Council (or by the ratepayers in other 
 than municipal districts) ; both gave such committees 
 authority to levy local rates ; both adopted existing 
 schools as the basis of operation, and only contem- 
 plated the establishment of new schools in order to 
 supplement the others where there might be need ; 
 both provided for the transference on fair terms of 
 existing schools to the district committee ; both 
 assumed that in all schools under the district com- 
 mittee the reading of the Holy Scriptures should be 
 part of the daily instruction of the scholars ; both 
 enforced a conscience clause substantially equivalent 
 to that which was required by the Act of 1870 ; both 
 made provision for a system of local and subordinate 
 inspection ; both recognised the supreme authority of 
 the Committee of Privy Council over the local schools 
 and the local inspection. Adding to the Bill the 
 strong outline of administrative interference which, 
 
THEISTATE OF EDUCATION IN 1869 107 
 
 about the same period, Mr. Lowe sketched out as 
 necessary in order to carry out the work of national 
 education ; adding, further, the compulsory clauses 
 which Mr. (afterwards Sir Thomas) Bazley desired 
 to introduce into the Bill of Messrs. Bruce, Forster, 
 and Egerton, we have, in fact, all the characteristic 
 principles of the Bill of ' 1 870, as originally prepared 
 by Mr. Forster.' 
 
 Before speaking of the Bill of 1870, which has made 
 so great a change in our educational system, and in 
 one portion of it realised the kind of religious education 
 which the founders * of the Committee of Council on 
 Education evidently preferred, it may be well to obtain 
 some insight into the actual state of education in the 
 country at the time. 
 
 On March 18, 1869, the House of Commons 
 ordered a 'return, confined to the municipal 
 boroughs of Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, and 
 Manchester, of all schools for the poorer 
 classes of children, whether such schools are 
 wholly or in part supported by taxation, private con- 
 tributions, or fees, and whether they be in the nature 
 of asylums or of day schools, provided that the fee (if 
 any) charged at any school included in the return does 
 not exceed \s. per week. Also a report of a sufficient 
 number of such schools in each of the said boroughs, 
 to inform the House of the quality of the education 
 which the said schools provide ; such return to include 
 the nature and dimensions of the premises, the age 
 and number of the scholars on the roll and in actual 
 attendance (distinguishing those who attend school 
 
 * See p. 44. 
 
loS 
 
 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 under any Act regulating the hours of labour from 
 the rest), and of the teachers, the hours and subjects 
 of instruction, the religious connection (if any) of the 
 schools, and by whom they are managed and in- 
 spected.' 
 
 It was entrusted to Mr. J. G. Fitch to obtain the 
 desired information for the boroughs of Birmingham 
 and Leeds, and to Mr. D. R. Fearon to do the same 
 for Liverpool and Manchester. Mr. Fitch's Report is 
 a very able and exhaustive one ; Mr. Fearon's is 
 somewhat less instructive. I believe these Reports 
 are the only complete official knowledge we have on 
 the subject, and it would seem that the House of 
 Commons regarded these large boroughs as repre- 
 sentative of the state of education in the towns 
 throughout the country. The returns were ordered 
 to be printed by the House of Commons on March 2, 
 1870. The following tables are taken from these 
 Reports : — 
 
 
 
 i % 
 
 
 
 .s 
 
 t3 
 
 CO 
 
 
 c 
 
 - 
 
 f.s 
 
 6.2 
 
 
 
 si 
 
 11 
 
 II 
 
 c2i 
 
 11 
 |l 
 l| 
 
 fi 
 
 11 
 
 
 .S t3 
 
 III 
 
 n 
 
 Birmingham 
 
 360,846 60,141 
 
 23,627 25,203 
 
 x6,oS3 
 
 i2;9io 
 
 10,783 
 
 11,099 
 
 9,661 
 
 Leeds. . . 
 
 253,110 42,185 20,384 19,614 
 
 12,422 
 
 8,593 
 
 7,070 
 
 6,332 
 
 5,32s 
 
 Liverpool . 
 Manchester . 
 
 509,052 84,842 39,681 37.383 
 
 28,116 
 
 11,975 
 
 9,744 
 
 4,338 
 
 3,786 
 
 370,892 61,815 35,783 31,003 
 
 23,250 
 
 3,.9» 
 
 2,662 
 
 2,471 
 
 2,016 
 
 The minute accuracy with which Mr. Fitch has 
 given particulars respecting the schools in Birming- 
 
SCHOOLS IN BIRMINGHAM 109 
 
 ham and Leeds enables me to furnish a complete pic- 
 ture of what was then (1869) being done for the 
 education of the poorer children in Birmingham and 
 Leeds. I have copied largely from what he says 
 about Birmingham, and it would only involve unneces- 
 sary repetition to do the same with respect to the 
 other towns. Assuming that one in six of the popu- 
 lation ought to be under instruction in elementary 
 schools, there ought to have been 60,141 children at 
 such schools in Birmingham ; instead of this there 
 were only 38,113 names of children borne upon the 
 rolls of all the elementary schools in the town. Of 
 these, 25,203 were in schools under Government inspec- 
 tion, and it may be assumed that they were receiving 
 a good education ; a further number of 1,940 were 
 attending with more or less regularity public schools 
 belonging to the various religious bodies that for 
 some reasons had not been placed under inspection, 
 and were not in receipt of Government grants. He 
 next turns to the private schools. Of these there were 
 5 under masters, with 334 names on the roll ; and 24 
 under mistresses, with 1,614 names on the books, held iri 
 chapels or other public buildings ; and there were 17 
 under masters, with 71 1 scholars on the rolls ; and 260 
 under mistresses, with 5,442 names on the books, held 
 in private houses ; there were 2 ragged schools, with 
 323 names on the roll ; and 8 schools at asylums for 
 orphans, the blind, the deaf and dumb, and other 
 necessitous children, with 1,401 names on the books, 
 and 4 excellent elementary schools in connection with 
 King Edward's Charity, with 1,274 names on the roll. 
 Taking all these schools into , account it would seem 
 
no ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 that there ought to have been 22,028 more children 
 at school than were attending. 
 
 To turn from the quantity of elementary educa- 
 tion provided to the quality. The inspected schools 
 were at the usual standard then expected, and a com- 
 parison of the average attendance with the number 
 on the books showed that the attendance was not so 
 satisfactory as Mr. Fitch thought it ought to be ; but 
 of this more presently. 
 
 Of the uninspected schools held in public build- 
 ings, Mr. Fitch says : ^ ' The most important Church of 
 England schools in this list are {a) new schools 
 waiting to be placed under inspection ; or (J?) mission 
 schools of an experimental kind, planted down in the 
 worst neighbourhoods of a populous parish, to gather 
 together the children preparatory to the ultimate 
 establishment of an ordinary national school ; or {c) 
 schools in which for some reason or other the con- 
 ditions of the Government grant are not fulfilled, or 
 the grant itself not desired.' 
 
 ^' Corresponding to this group of schools, I expected 
 to find a considerable number of day schools sup- 
 ported by Nonconformist congregations, which were 
 destitute of public aid owing to the well-known objec- 
 tion of Dissenters till recently to accept State super- 
 vision. It will, however, be seen that nearly all the 
 schools attached to Dissenting places of worship fall 
 into another class, and are not public institutions in 
 any sense of the word.' What is intended by this is 
 thus explained elsewhere. ^ ' I do not include in this 
 list any school in which the teachers are not engaged 
 
 » Report, p. 34. * Ibid., p. 36. » Ibid., p. 34. 
 
UNINSPECTED SCHOOLS IN BIRMINGHAM ii 
 
 and dismissible by managers, nor in which some por- 
 tion of the revenue for their maintenance is not pro- 
 vided by such managers.' 
 
 * * In the Roman Catholic school included under 
 this head, both church and school are new ; and in 
 starting the school the clergy^man in charge has 
 availed himself of the services of two Sisters of Charity, 
 who devote themselves earnestly to the work. No 
 objection is here entertained to Government aid, and 
 the school, which is well built and furnished, will 
 probably fulfil the conditions at some future time. 
 It is thought better to continue to use the inexpensive 
 and yet very efficient ser\'ices which the Sisters afford 
 until the whole mission establishment is more per- 
 manently fixed.* 
 
 * ' On a review of the class of schools which may 
 be generally described as public elementary schools 
 not under Government inspection, I find it impossible 
 to tabulate their educational results with the same 
 accuracy as the inspected schools. But my observa- 
 tions fully entitle me to say, that as a class they are 
 far less efficient ; that they enjoy very little of any 
 other superintendence to compensate for the absence 
 of inspection ; and that certainly not one-fourth of the 
 children in them could j>ass, with even moderate suc- 
 cess, the examination appropriate to their ages under 
 the Revised Code.* 
 
 As I have already mentioned, Mr. Fitch complains 
 of the irregular attendance of the children whose 
 names are on the books of the schools. He says : ' 
 • A comparison between the numbers on the roll and 
 
 > Hefcrt, p. 36. « IHd., pp. 36, 37, » IHd.y p. 24. 
 
112 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 in average attendance, even in well-organised schools 
 in which registers are kept, shows that the attendance 
 is very desultory and unsatisfactory; 18,650 are on 
 the books, and only 14,137, or ^6 per cent of them, 
 are actually present at an exceptionally favourable 
 time of the year (September), while 11,822 are in 
 average attendance. The truth is, the number 
 recorded as " on the books " is very delusive. In 
 some well-managed schools the registers are periodi- 
 cally cleared once in two months, at least, of the 
 names of all who have not been in attendance ; but 
 very different practice prevails on this subject in 
 various schools, and it is impossible to accept the 
 number purporting to be on the roll as any true 
 measure of the work which the school is doing.' 
 Since then, efforts have been made to secure that 
 the registers are more regularly cleared, and the 
 efficiency of a school is partly judged by the regu- 
 larity of the attendance of the scholars. It is therefore 
 instructive to note that, after compulsory attendance 
 has been the law of the land for more than twenty- 
 four years, and after large sums have been, and are 
 being, expended to enforce it, the percentage of 
 attendance of all the children throughout England 
 whose names are on the school rolls was last year, 
 according to the official returns, only 77-3 1 per cent, 
 instead of the j6 per cent over which Mr. Fitch 
 grieves, and that in London, where the cost of en- 
 forcing attendance is exceptionally heavy, the per- 
 centage is only TT^^- 
 
 It is unnecessary to examine the returns for the 
 other three boroughs at length, as they substantially 
 
INSPECTED SCHOOLS IN BIRMINGHAM 113 
 
 resemble what is said about Birmingham ; but before 
 speaking of the private schools it may be well to show 
 the extent to which various bodies had made sacrifices 
 to promote popular education. The cost of the main 
 tenance of the inspected Church schools in Birming- 
 ham amounted to i/. ^s. \\d. for each child in average 
 attendance, and the proportion of this sum contributed 
 by the children's pence amounted to \os. ; by the 
 Government grant to (^s. ii\d., and by subscriptions 
 
 
 Church of England 
 
 Nonconformists 
 
 Roman Catholics 
 
 1 
 
 Inspected schools 
 
 Not 
 inspected 
 schools 
 
 Inspected 
 schools 
 
 Inspected 
 schools 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 c 
 
 
 
 S^ 
 
 c , 
 
 4> 
 
 c 
 
 <0 
 
 
 c 
 
 V 
 
 
 C V 
 
 
 il* 
 
 11 
 
 1| 
 
 14,137 
 
 |2 
 
 T,OI7 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 697 
 
 \ 
 
 4,772 
 
 o„ 
 3,773 
 
 li 
 
 2,770 
 
 i 
 
 < 
 2,088 
 
 i1 
 
 2,780 
 
 u 
 
 1,925 
 
 Birmingham 
 
 16,766 
 
 18,650 
 
 Leeds . 
 
 15.306 
 
 14,443 
 
 10,785 
 
 921 
 
 714 
 
 3,521 
 
 3,442 
 
 2,485 
 
 1,467 
 
 1,729 1,308 
 
 Liverpool ) 
 Manchester j 
 
 « 
 
 « 
 
 » . 
 
 * 
 
 « 
 
 « 
 
 » 
 
 ft 
 
 » 
 
 ft ft 
 
 * Mr. Fearon gives no details concerning the religious bodies who provided 
 schools in these boroughs. 
 
 to 4J-. 2\d. Each child in a Nonconformist or British 
 school cost i/. I2s. 4i</., of which \\s. 'j\d. came from 
 the children's fees, gs, df\d. from the Government 
 grant, and 11^.4^^. from subscriptions. Each child 
 in a Roman Catholic school cost i/. 5^., of which the 
 children's pence provided ^s. 7\d., the Government 
 grant lOi". i\d., and subscriptions 8j. 3^. 
 
 These figures, and some others in the Report 
 
 H 
 
1 1 4 ELEMENTAR V ED UCA TION 
 
 require to be supplemented by the following state- 
 ment in the same Report : 
 
 ^ ' As a rule, Nonconformist schools of this class 
 charge higher fees than Church schools, and the 
 proportion of voluntary subscriptions required for 
 their maintenance is considerably less. On closer 
 investigation it turned out that in the Hebrew school 
 more than two-thirds of the children are admitted 
 free, and that the schools form part of the congre- 
 gational establishment, which is charged with the 
 payment in a collective form of that portion of the 
 school revenue generally paid in a more direct 
 manner by the parents. The school, therefore, is on 
 a wholly exceptional financial basis, and no general 
 conclusion can be safely founded on its returns. The 
 balance sheet of the Wycliffe school is also abnormal. 
 It has only been placed under inspection this year for 
 the first time, and special voluntary efforts have been 
 required to equip the school with new desks and 
 fittings, adapted to the requirements of the Privy 
 Council. The whole cost of these alterations happens 
 to come into the accounts of the present year. The 
 return for the Wesleyan school sets down as voluntary 
 subscriptions the fees paid by the Education Aid 
 Society at ^d. per head per week for i,o8i children. It 
 is evident that this sum ought to have been included as 
 children's fees, since the inference that it represents a 
 local and denominational effort is wholly misleading.' 
 Notwithstanding this statement of the discrepancy 
 between some of the figures given above concerning 
 the relative cost of different systems of schools, and 
 
 ' Report, p. 29. 
 
THE 'STANDARDS' OF THE SCHOLARS 115 
 
 the sources from which the necessary funds are 
 derived, I have thought it desirable to insert the 
 figures referred to, as they represent an approximate 
 statement of the cost at that time of maintaining 
 elementary schools. 
 
 ^ ' It will be seen that the 122 departments 
 under State inspection are maintained at an annual 
 cost of 20,312/. lis. lod. The whole of this sum is 
 of course administered by the managers, who appoint 
 and dismiss the teachers, and control the religious 
 and educational character of the schools. The 
 personal contributions of the managers and of the 
 subscribers, whom they represent, amount in all to 
 4,350/. 2s. 3</., or to about 21 per cent, of the total 
 income. In other words, the entire amount of 
 voluntary subscriptions now raised in Birmingham to 
 meet the Government grant is pretty nearly equal to 
 the sum which is realised by the imposition of a rate 
 of a penny in the pound on the property of the 
 borough.' 
 
 With regard to the Reports of H.M. Inspectors 
 of Schools, Mr. Fitch says : ^ * The proportion of 
 those passing in the different standards is so nearly 
 uniform that it is unnecessary to give the exact 
 figures. But it is a significant fact that out of the 
 number of scholars presented, more than one-third 
 are in the standard appropriate to a child of the age 
 of six ; and that of the whole number presented only 
 1,300, or less than one-fifth, are comprised in the 
 three higher standards, the general proportion of 
 those passing being 88 per cent.' 
 
 ' Report, p. 33. ' Ibid., p. 26. 
 
1 16 ELEMENTAR V EDUCA TION 
 
 What Mr. Fitch says with regard to the provision 
 of school accommodation in Birmingham would apply 
 not only to other large towns, but also to various 
 parts of the country. I quote it here because it goes 
 far to account for the existence of the large number of 
 private schools, to which I must again refer : * The 
 public school accommodation is very unequally 
 divided in the various districts. This arises from the 
 fact that the clergy and promoters of Church schools 
 are the only persons who take cognisance of the 
 needs of a given district, and who seek to proportion 
 the school accommodation to those needs. My 
 colleague, the Rev. H. Capel, who inspects the 
 Church of England schools in this district, favours 
 me with a calculation, founded partly on the condi- 
 tions on which building grants are awarded by the 
 Council Office, and partly on general statistics, as to 
 what is the normal and satisfactory amount of Church 
 school accommodation in each parish. He says : " If 
 the total accommodation of a school, including class- 
 rooms, be at the rate of eight square feet per child on 
 the books, and ten square feet per child in average 
 attendance, a school may be considered full." He 
 further estimates the number of children who should 
 be at a Church school at one in ten of the whole 
 population, and hence deduces this formula: "In a 
 well-equipped parish the number of square feet in 
 the school- and class-rooms should be equal to the 
 population." There can be no doubt that many 
 clergymen accept this view of their responsibilities, 
 and seek to provide this amount of accommodation 
 without any reference to the other educational 
 
DISTRIB UTION OF PEOPLE IN BIRMINGHAM 1 1 7 
 
 agencies which may happen to exist in their re- 
 spective parishes. Others, again, find themselves 
 unable, owing to local circumstances, as in the parishes 
 of Holy Trinity and St. Peter, Dale End, to establish 
 an aided school of any kind.' 
 
 The full meaning of this last sentence is after- 
 wards thus explained : * * In one important respect 
 Birmingham differs from other large and prosperous 
 towns. Generally the richer people, who reside at a 
 distance from their places of business, live in the 
 suburbs in all directions, and their residences form a 
 zone completely surrounding the town proper. In 
 this way whatever of wealth or philanthropy the town 
 produces, if not concentrated upon the town itself, is 
 at least fairly distributed in its neighbourhood. But 
 Birmingham possesses, in the Edgbaston district, a 
 suburb so exceptionally attractive that nine-tenths of 
 the richer Birmingham people live in that one direc- 
 tion. Thus it happens that the two or three suburban 
 parishes, in which it would be easiest for the clergyman 
 to obtain help for the maintenance of schools, have 
 no poor residents, and scarcely any need for parochial 
 schools : on the other hand, other suburban parishes 
 are well-nigh filled with poor dwellings. The district 
 churches are all comparatively recent. They are very 
 slenderly endowed, and there are in the neighbour- 
 hood no rich people who, either as employers or 
 residents, recognise the local claim, and are willing to 
 help the clergyman. And as no denominational pur- 
 pose is to be secured by the erection of another day 
 school in such districts, it is very rare to find any 
 
 ' Report, p. 21, 
 
ii8 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 Dissenting school to relieve the incumbent' ^ * The 
 Nonconformist school is generally attached to the 
 chapel, and the chapel has always been built with a 
 view to the convenience of its congregation. For 
 this reason it is more frequently found in the centre 
 of the trading classes, and of people in comfortable 
 circumstances. Now and then a mission or sub- 
 sidiary chapel is established by a rich congregation 
 in the midst of a poor neighbourhood at a distance, 
 and to this an efficient school is sometimes, though 
 very rarely, attached. I trust I am not wounding 
 any susceptibilities when I say that there is nothing 
 in the present system and resources of the Noncon- 
 formists to make it possible for them to cover the 
 waste places of the educational field. They are not 
 accustomed to take cognisance of a district as such, 
 or to distribute their schools on any general plan.' 
 Under the condition of things thus described, it is 
 evident that the school provision for the town must 
 have been very inadequate. Clergymen working in 
 large, poor, populous parishes, with slender means of 
 their own, and a very limited number of parishioners 
 able and willing to help, would find it impracticable 
 to provide all the schools that were required. In con- 
 sequence of this a very large number of private 
 schools sprang into existence, the general characteris- 
 tics of which are thus described in the Report before 
 us : ^ ' The largest class of private schools consists of 
 those kept by governesses in private houses. These 
 amount to 260, and provide for 5,442 children. With 
 scarcely an exception they are held in the ordinary 
 
 ' Report, p. 20. • Ibid., p. 51. 
 
PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN BIRMINGHAM 119 
 
 living-rooms in dwelling-houses of the humbler 
 class ; only in one instance have I found one in 
 a room specially built for a schoolroom. Many of 
 these establishments professed to provide instruction 
 for girls of all ages, but the majority are mere dame 
 schools or nurseries in which the children for the 
 most part are received to be " minded " or taken care 
 of merely, and scarcely profess to be places of instruc- 
 tion.' ^ * The most striking characteristic of these 
 humble private schools is the extraordinary idleness 
 which prevails in them. I should say that three- 
 fourths of the children whom I have seen were sitting 
 at my entrance into the room without any occupation 
 whatever. The complete absence of organisation or 
 classification, and the fact that the teacher is always 
 unassisted, will account for this. " We use the indi- 
 vidual method," said one of the more ambitious 
 governesses to me ; and this method consists in call- 
 ing up one or two in turn to say their tasks. It is 
 obviously very difficult to secure employment for the 
 rest, and as a rule they do nothing but con over the 
 task before they come up, and relapse into idleness 
 afterwards. This idleness is partly disguised, no 
 doubt. Among the boys it often goes by the name 
 of " copying or writing on slates," but, as this is done 
 without the least check or supervision, it comes to 
 very little. Among the girls " work," so-called, is a 
 great resource. By work is meant any occupation 
 for a girl's fingers which happens to come in their 
 way. Systematic instruction in sewing on any plan 
 which enables a girl to surmount, one by one, the 
 
 ^ Report, p. 56. 
 
I20 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 difficulties of the art in its various branches is never 
 obtainable, nor even present in the mind of the 
 governess as a thing worth obtaining in schools of 
 this kind. 
 
 ' After what I have said, it is impossible to make 
 any other than a most discouraging summary of the 
 worth of the instruction imparted to the 6,153 chil- 
 dren whom the returns show to be in attendance at 
 private schools. If I say that three-fourths of them 
 are learning to read, and one-half to spell and write, 
 and one-tenth to work simple sums in an unintelligent 
 but still not ineffective way, and that about 2 or 3 
 per cent, are making a beginning in elementary 
 history, geography, or grammar — chiefly by the 
 method of learning by heart a few sentences from 
 a text-book on the subject — I feel confident that I 
 err, if at all, on the side of a too liberal and hopeful 
 estimate of the work they are now doing, or are 
 capable of doing.' 
 
 I have transcribed so much of Mr. Fitch's very 
 careful and able Report of the educational position of 
 Birmingham, because I know no other description of 
 the educational condition of a large town that was so 
 thoroughly examined. I doubt very much whether 
 it would at all accurately represent the condition of 
 things in a considerable portion of the country. Where 
 the clergyman was active, and the size of his parish 
 manageable, very much more was accomplished ; 
 whilst in numbers of rural parishes, as I know from 
 personal experience, ample school accommodation was 
 provided for all who needed it. The following tabular 
 statement will show that such must have been the 
 
THE CHURCH'S WORK FROM 1811 TO 1870 121 
 
 case ; it includes only schools under Government 
 inspection in 1870 : — 
 
 Accommodation 
 
 Average attendance 
 
 Church of England schools . 1,365,080 
 British, Wesleyan, &c., schools. 411,948 
 Roman Catholic schools . . 101,556 
 
 844,334 
 
 241,989 
 
 66,066 
 
 As I have given the amount of school accommoda- 
 tion in 1870, it maybe well to add that between 181 1 
 and 1870 there had been expended in erecting 
 Church schools 6,270,577/., and on their maintenance 
 from voluntary contributions, 8,500,000/. ; since 1870, 
 i.e. up to August 1893, the Church has provided 
 additional accommodation in 5,838 new schools for 
 1,328,761 children at a cost of 7,125,402/. More- 
 over, these figures stand as they do after allowance 
 has been made for the surrender of 864 Church 
 schools by their managers to School Boards. To- 
 wards the great expenditure required for this im- 
 portant and costly work the National Society has 
 most liberally contributed. 
 
 Before leaving the subject of the state of things 
 when Mr. Forster's Bill became law, it may be well 
 to give one other illustration of the want of school 
 accommodation in the poorest and most necessitous 
 parts of large towns. In 1870 the Society for the 
 Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce 
 determined ^ ' to ascertain the number of children 
 within one square mile at the East End of London 
 provided for by the existing educational machinery, 
 ' Pamphlet by G. C. T. Bartley, p. i. 
 
122 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 the efficiency of such machinery, and the extent to 
 which it is taken advantage of.' The district included 
 the worst portion of Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, and 
 Hoxton, a part of Kingsland, Hackney, and the whole 
 of Haggerstone. 
 
 The estimated number of children between three 
 and twelve was 30,160. Number at school : — 
 
 In Government inspected and aided schools . . 5,6i8 
 In Government inspected schools .... 480 
 
 In public schools, paying a fee, but not inspected . i,8io 
 
 In free schools not inspected i,990 
 
 In private dames' schools .... (about) i,ooo 
 
 Total .... 
 
 . 10,898 
 
 Probably the estimated number of children in 
 private schools was much below the mark, but the 
 great deficiency in a populous neighbourhood of this 
 kind emphasises what has been said in a preceding 
 page, that the supply of schools in more favoured 
 parts of the country must have been ample. 
 
 It is evident from the statistics just given that the 
 number of children who were at school fell far below 
 the number that ought to have been there, and the 
 nation that had long been indifferent to the question 
 was aroused to a certain pitch of excitement on the 
 subject. The franchise had been extended very 
 widely, and the appeal that those persons should be 
 educated who were responsible to no inconsiderable 
 extent for directing the manner in which the country- 
 ought to be governed was felt to be an argument of 
 very great force. Though much had been done, it was 
 evident to all that much more remained to be done ; 
 the question was. How w^s it to be done ? The strong 
 
MR. FORSTER'S BILL OF 1870 123 
 
 political as well as religious feeling entertained by 
 the Nonconformists and advanced Liberal politicians 
 against the great share of the task of educating the 
 nation being borne by the Church, made them deter- 
 mined to support no plan that would not throw the 
 management of the national system of education into 
 other hands. In my opinion this was unfortunate, as 
 I believe that the work would have been better done, 
 and at not more than one-half of the expenditure that 
 has been since incurred, if the Government had greatly 
 increased the assistance it gave through channels some- 
 what similar to those which were in operation in 1 870. 
 And, besides that, it would have avoided throwing the 
 question of the education of the people into the cal- 
 dron of politics, so that, whether the children shall 
 have any religious instruction or none, whether they 
 shall be brought up as Christians or as heathens, has 
 now to be determined in many places by popular elec- 
 tions, in which the voice of party has for the most 
 part more weight than either the sense of responsi- 
 bility or the thought of what is best for the children's 
 present and eternal welfare. However, any arrange- 
 ment in which such considerations would have weight 
 was at the time impossible, and Mr. W. E. Forster, 
 as the representative of the Government, introduced 
 in 1 870 his Bill for providing additional facilities for 
 educating the people. 
 
 In his opening speech * he stated that the existing 
 provision for effective elementary education in Eng- 
 land included about a million and a half of scholars, 
 on the books of about 1 1,000 aided schools, of whom 
 
 • Delivered in the House of Commons, P'ebruary 17, 1870. 
 
124 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 about a million were in average attendance. The 
 exact figures drawn from official sources have been 
 given on a preceding page. This number he showed to 
 be very insufficient, and did not represent more than 
 two-fifths of the children who ought to have been at 
 school ; no doubt many of the remaining three-fifths 
 were at schools of some kind, but the instruction 
 given in a very large proportion of these schools was 
 worthless, as it was shown to have been at Birming- 
 ham. In his speech he summed up the results of the 
 returns concerning the town I have just named, and 
 the three others which were specially examined, and 
 from which I have quoted above at some length, as 
 follows : * It is calculated that in Liverpool the number 
 of children between five and thirteen who ought to 
 receive an elementary education is 80,000 ; but, as 
 far as we can ascertain, 20,000 of them attend no 
 school whatever, while at least another 20,000 attend 
 schools where they get an education not worth having. 
 In Manchester — that is, in the Borough of Manchester, 
 not including Salford — there are about 65,000 children 
 who might be at school, and of this number about 
 16,000 go to no school at all. I must, however, add 
 that Manchester appears to be better than Liverpool 
 in one respect — that there are fewer schools where the 
 education is not worth having. As a Yorkshireman, 
 I am sorry to say that, from what I hear, Leeds 
 appears to be as bad as Liverpool, and so also I fear 
 is Birmingham.' 
 
 He earnestly insisted in his speech that in build- 
 ing up they must not pull down, and that the existing 
 schools were to be preserved. In an oft-quoted 
 
THE BIRMINGHAM EDUCATION LEAGUE 125 
 
 passage he said that the newly-designed schools were 
 to supplement and not to supplant the existing 
 schools. At the same time it is evident that he antici- 
 pated a large influx of the existing voluntary schools 
 into the ranks of the rate-supported schools which he 
 was inventing, as provision was made for enabling their 
 managers to transfer their schools, although there 
 was no power given in the trust deeds to do so, 
 and this without the trustees in whose names the pro- 
 perty was vested having a veto on the transaction ; 
 and as the Bill was introduced into the Lower House 
 of Parliament and passed through all its stages there, 
 a chance majority of the Committee of Management 
 of such schools at any meeting might ordain a 
 transfer. This provision was altered in the Upper 
 House, and a majority of two-thirds of the managers 
 and two-thirds of the subscribers to the schools was 
 required to make such a transfer legal. If these pro- 
 visions were not satisfactory to many managers of 
 voluntary schools, they were still less so to a consider- 
 able portion of Mr. Forster's own supporters in Parlia- 
 ment, as they were anxious, under the guidance of 
 the Birmingham Education League, to place the 
 whole State help to education in popular hands, so 
 that all education should be secular, compulsory, and 
 free, and that all other schools should receive no 
 support beyond what private benevolence and the 
 payments of the scholars might furnish. 
 
 The Bill provided that the Education Department 
 should procure an accurate return of the educational 
 provision in every borough and parish in the country ; 
 that where such provision was insufficient the inhabi- 
 
126 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 tants should be called upon to provide what was 
 needed within a specified time, and that if they failed 
 to do so by voluntary subscriptions, a School Board 
 should be formed which would have power to erect 
 what schools were needed, and to maintain them in 
 efficiency, at the cost of the ratepayers. Or in the 
 event of any parish desiring at once to have a School 
 Board, upon a public meeting being called and affirm- 
 ing such a desire, their wish was to be gratified. In 
 like manner the majority of the Corporation of any 
 Municipal Borough might make a similar demand, 
 which was to be at once acceded to. Without a request 
 from any quarter a School Board was to be created for 
 the Metropolis, as it was evident that the educational 
 provision there was insufficient. When the Bill was 
 introduced power was given to a School Board to 
 make grants towards the maintenance of voluntary 
 schools within its jurisdiction, provided that if help 
 was given by it to any voluntary school an equal 
 amount of assistance should be given to every volun- 
 tary school in its borders. 
 
 This provision was eliminated during the passage 
 of the Bill through the House of Commons, Mr. 
 Gladstone, the Prime Minister, promising that an 
 equivalent addition should be made to the Govern- 
 ment grant. This promise has been kept in the 
 letter, but broken in the spirit, as the cost of elemen- 
 tary education has so increased, that as large a pro- 
 portion of the cost of the education of each child has 
 still to be raised from voluntary sources as was required 
 in 1870. And still further, the provision in the Act 
 was designed to sustain voluntary schools against the 
 
SCHOOL BOARDS AND THEIR RATES 127 
 
 rival schools created by the Act, which might threaten 
 their existence, and the increased Government grant 
 was given at once, and always has been given, to 
 Board schools equally with voluntary schools, and so 
 has been of no assistance to the latter in resisting the 
 assaults of their rivals, who had the bottomless purse 
 of the rates to draw upon in addition to every source of 
 income possessed by Denominational schools. 
 
 Facilities were given to School Boards for borrow- 
 ing the money required for the erection or en- 
 largement of schools, and the repayment might be 
 extended over a period not exceeding fifty years. 
 This facility has been largely made use of, as 
 nearly twenty-six millions have been borrowed for 
 the purpose. After the expiration of the year 1870 
 no grants towards the building of schools were to be 
 made by the State, and it was left in the power of 
 the School Board to decide whether it would supply 
 any deficiency that might arise after that time, 
 or permit volunteers at their own expense to 
 erect any school which they might wish to provide. 
 Mr. Forster reckoned that a rate of 3</. in the 
 pound would be the maximum of requirement in 
 any place, but no limit on the amount to be levied 
 was inserted in the Act, and the event has demon- 
 strated the inadequacy of his estimate. Members 
 of a School Board were to be elected for a period 
 of three years, by the cumulative vote, and the 
 London School Board was empowered to pay its 
 chairman, a power which it has never yet exercised. 
 The principle of compulsory attendance was intro- 
 duced, and parents neglecting to send their chil- 
 
128 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 dren to school according to the provisions of the 
 bye-laws of the district in which they resided were 
 made liable to punishment by fine or imprisonment. 
 In the Bill as introduced, no provision was made 
 concerning the character of the religious teaching 
 that might be given, but a conscience clause was 
 required to be hung up in every schoolroom, and to be 
 observed wherever a Government grant was received. 
 This clause provided that every child, at the request 
 of his parents or guardians, was to be exempted from 
 attendance at all religious teaching or when prayers 
 were said, and the religious lesson was in all cases to 
 be given at the beginning or at the end of the morn- 
 ing or afternoon school hours. During the progress 
 of the Bill through Committee a clause, called after its 
 proposer, the Cowper-Temple clause, was introduced, 
 by which the religious teaching that might be given 
 in a Board school was restricted, so that no catechism 
 or religious formulary distinctive of any religious body 
 might be used. The proposer of this was a supporter 
 and friend of the Government, so that it is probable 
 the clause was formulated under the eye, if not by the 
 direction, of Mr. Forster. Its effect has been that no 
 distinctive religious teaching can be given in any 
 Board school, whilst perfect liberty is accorded to 
 every School Board to make the teaching given in the 
 schools under its control purely secular, a liberty that 
 has been acted upon in some places, especially in 
 Wales, and which would probably have been acted 
 upon in many more, but for an instinctive feeling on 
 the part of many members of School Boards that if no 
 religious teaching were given, parents would prefer 
 
CHURCH CATECHISM AND BOARD SCHOOLS 129 
 
 Denominational schools. By this clause the Church 
 Catechism was effectually excluded from all Board 
 schools, an object that was specially desired by many, 
 perhaps most. Dissenters. Whilst the Bill was under 
 discussion in Parliament, the friends of distinctive 
 religious teaching were assured by those who, as they 
 understood, were speaking with authority that all 
 that was aimed at by the clause was the exclusion of 
 the ipsissima verba of the Catechism, and that the 
 teachers in Board schools would be at perfect liberty 
 to instruct the scholars under their care in all that the 
 Catechism contained. This understanding of the 
 clause received a strong confirmation in what was 
 said by Lord Salisbury at a meeting in Limehouse 
 Town Hall on March 21, 1895. He said: 'I re- 
 member the debates on that clause well, and those 
 who proposed it never professed to intend that it should 
 do more than it professed to do — that is, to remove 
 formularies from the teaching of the Board schools. 
 They never intended that doctrines should be pre- 
 vented from being taught in those schools. But, 
 although I have the greatest respect for those who 
 devised this compromise, and although I know that 
 many of them were animated by an earnest desire to 
 promote education in the religion of the Church, yet 
 I think it was founded upon an error, and was bound 
 in the long run to fail in its effect. After all, how- 
 ever, I do not think it becomes us to speak ill of the 
 Cowper-Temple clause ; it has enabled us to get over 
 twenty-five years of joint education. Nothing is 
 eternal in this world, not even a compromise.' When, 
 however, the Bill had become an Act, and the earlier 
 
 I 
 
i 30 ^LEMENTAR V ED UCA TtON 
 
 School Boards were elected, a majority of the mem- 
 bers being opposed to definite Church teaching, it 
 was successfully contended that the clause contained 
 much more than had been represented, and that in 
 principle it excluded the doctrine contained in* the 
 Catechism, not less than the Catechism itself; and 
 upon this interpretation of it most, if not all, School 
 Boards have acted. In a few the Apostles' Creed has 
 been used, and upon appeal to the Education Depart- 
 ment this has been allowed, because it was said that 
 all Christians accepted this Creed ; but, notwithstand- 
 ing this, by most School Boards its introduction, 
 when proposed, has been prohibited. And it has to 
 be borne in mind that if the Creed is allowed to be 
 taught, objections would probably be raised to the 
 interpretation of some of its clauses, if given in such 
 a manner as Churchmen would approve, and that a 
 strict watch is kept by some members of School 
 Boards, so that no teaching in a Church direction 
 may be introduced. 
 
 A further provision of the Act was that no 
 annual grant was to be made in respect of religious 
 instruction, and that H.M. Inspector was no longer 
 to be allowed to examine the scholars of any school 
 as to their proficiency in religious knowledge, but 
 that one or two days in each year might be set apart 
 for the examination of the children in such know- 
 ledge by an inspector appointed by the Bishop of 
 the diocese, or some other authority. 
 
 So soon as H.M. Inspectors were forbidden to 
 continue to examine the children in the schools 
 they visited in religious knowledge, most dioceses, 
 
SUPPLYING THE RELIGIOUS TEACHING 131 
 
 and eventually all, encouraged by an annual grant 
 from the National Society, appointed one or more 
 inspectors to examine the children in Church schools 
 as to their proficiency in the knowledge of the Bible 
 and the Prayer Book, and especially of the Church 
 Catechism, and there is good reason for believing 
 that the religious instruction given in our Church 
 schools was never better than it is at the present 
 time. 
 
 When the Act of 1870 was passed, it was said 
 that the definite religious teaching which children 
 were debarred from receiving in Board schools could 
 be supplied in other ways. The following description 
 of efforts made at Birmingham with this object was 
 given in evidence to the Education Commission of 1 886 
 by the Rev. R. B. Burges, a member of the Birming- 
 ham School Board. ^ 'The School Board people in 
 opposition to us said that they could give religious 
 education elsewhere, and they started a society, called 
 the Religious Education Society, which was to have 
 the schools for the first half-hour in the day, in which 
 they could give any religious instruction which they 
 pleased. That society has been given up and is gone 
 out of existence. Then there came another society, 
 of a similar character but a little broader and wider, 
 in which several Churchmen took part. That has also 
 been given up, so that there is no organisation of that 
 kind to give the education which all agree ought 
 to be given to the children, if not in the day schools, 
 yet somewhere. There is one other thing. It was 
 
 • Minutes of Evidence^ p. 104. 
 
 I 2 
 
132 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 said that if the schools were given over to the clergy 
 of the parish in the morning, they would have an 
 opportunity of teaching the children by their Church 
 organisations. One school was given over — St. Martin's 
 School — by Dr. Wilkinson. The condition of that 
 school is just this : all the children above the second 
 standard were withdrawn from the school and sent to 
 another, so that the rector of the parish has only 
 first and second standards — in fact, an infant school — 
 to teach morning by morning. There is an average 
 attendance of 300 at that school now. I was in the 
 school on Friday, and only about 100 had attended the 
 religious instruction that morning out of 300. I con- 
 sider, therefore, that this is pretty well a failure also. 
 I would only say, further, as so much has been said of 
 it, that Dr. Wilkinson has counselled us over and over 
 again not to .give up our schools, and he has taken an 
 actual part in maintaining other Church schools from 
 being handed over to the Board. There was another 
 attempt made by the Rev. E. J. Stoughton, Diocesan 
 Inspector, to give religious instruction. His plan was 
 to have the Board schools on Saturdays, and to invite 
 the children to attend instruction given by trained 
 day-school teachers. This he did in four Board 
 schools during the whole of the year 1 878 and three 
 months of 1879. This also proved a failure, the 
 children ceasing to attend.' This last-named plan has 
 been tried in several places. In a very few when the 
 clergyman was exceptionally able and popular, and 
 taught himself, it succeeded ; in all other cases it failed. 
 Mr. Burges further added : ^ * Some persons have said 
 ' Minutes of Evidence ^ p. 105. 
 
SUNDAY SCHOOLS INADEQUATE 133 
 
 that Sunday schools would supply the deficiency. A 
 few years ago I got a return from every Sunday school 
 in Birmingham, Church of England, Nonconformist, 
 Roman Catholic, and all, and the truth of it was agreed 
 to by all denominations at a public meeting which 
 was held for the purpose. There were, according to 
 these returns, 26,000 children on the books of elemen- 
 tary schools who were not on the books of any Sun- 
 day schools, so that the Sunday schools do not meet 
 the deficiency : they are not able to get the children, 
 and those that most need the teaching. I think it 
 will be agreed by most people that, as a rule, the 
 attendants at Sunday schools are a better class of 
 children rather than the very offscou ring of the people.' 
 The present Bishop of Manchester has very strongly 
 insisted in many speeches upon the inadequacy of 
 Sunday schools to make up for the loss of religious 
 teaching in day schools. His great experience of 
 the unhappy effects of mere secular teaching upon 
 the people of Australia, among whom he lived and 
 worked for many years, strongly corroborates the 
 evidence given by Mr. B urges. 
 
 The clause in the Act which limited building grants 
 to applications made before the end of the year met 
 with a response which must have surprised its pro- 
 posers. When Churchmen found that the newly- 
 created Board schools were not to give religious 
 instruction in a way that they valued, and that there 
 was danger of some of them excluding religious 
 education altogether, they promptly acted upon the 
 advice given by the National Society, and applications 
 for building grants poured in upon the Education 
 
134 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 Department from all parts of the country. Many 
 parishes that had been apathetic so long as there 
 was nothing immediately threatening to rouse them 
 to action vigorously bestirred themselves when they 
 realised that a school must be erected by private 
 liberality within a very short time, or else that a 
 popularly-elected Board would be chosen to supply 
 what was needed, and that the cost, whatever it might 
 be, would have to be furnished by a rate. The funds 
 of the National Society were heavily drawn upon, and 
 a considerable amount of liberality was displayed by 
 Churchmen locally, in contributing what was needed 
 for erecting schools, and in furnishing the Central 
 Society with funds to assist those who were unable 
 otherwise to accomplish what was required. There 
 were faint-hearted people who prophesied that in a 
 few years all voluntary schools would cease to exist, 
 and others, still more feeble, who determined to hand 
 over their schools to a Board without a struggle ; 
 happily the number of these last named was very 
 small. It took several years to complete the erection 
 of the schools, for which grants from the Education 
 Department had been asked, but the official returns 
 show that in 1880 the accommodation provided in 
 Church schools would suffice for 2,327,379 children, 
 or nearly a million more than the schools would con- 
 tain in 1870, and that the average attendance had 
 risen to 1,471,615, or 627,281 in excess of what it was 
 when the Education Bill passed into law. And it is 
 well to remember that this increase was made, not- 
 withstanding that there were losses (to which I have 
 already called attention) which had to be made up, 
 
SCHOOL BOARDS AT WORK 135 
 
 owing to the difficulties, the apathy, or the indifference 
 of some Church school managers. 
 
 In many places great zeal for the promotion of 
 popular education was suddenly aroused when it could 
 be carried on by money raised by rates on the whole 
 community ; and some who had been profoundly 
 indifferent to the subject so long as a large portion of 
 the outlay had to be provided by private liberality 
 were excited to a state of enthusiasm in the cause 
 when their neighbours could be compelled to supply 
 the requisite funds by the rate collectors. In ten 
 years after the passing of the Act of 1870, School 
 Boards had made provision for the education of 
 1,082,634 children, and the average attendance in their 
 schools was more than three-quarters of a million. 
 
 The sudden creation of so many new schools 
 naturally increased the cost of carrying them on ; and 
 this growth of expenditure was still further stimulated 
 by the action of many School Boards. Their mem- 
 bers were far from agreeing with what had been urged 
 by the promoters of the Education Act, that the new 
 system of schools was to supplement and not to sup- 
 plant those already in existence. Their desire was 
 to destroy the existing schools, and sometimes, by 
 planting new schools in the immediate vicinity of exist- 
 ing ones, to draw away their scholars ; in others by 
 bribing away their most efficient teachers by offering 
 greatly increased salaries, and in others by a very 
 enlarged expenditure to make their schools more 
 attractive ; and as the ratepayers had to find the 
 money, it was a matter of comparative indifference 
 to members of the Board how much was spent. The 
 
136 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 average cost of each child in average attendance at 
 Board schools in 1880 was 2/. \s. ii|</., while in 
 Church schools it was i/. 14$-. \o\d.y and in 1871 it 
 had been only \l. ^s. g^d. ; while the sum raised by 
 voluntary contributions for the maintenance of Church 
 schools, which in 1871 was 372,350/., amounted in 
 1880 to 762,162/. The strain upon the managers of 
 voluntary schools commenced thus early, and has 
 been continued ever since, the apparent object of 
 some School Boards, and, in the opinion of some 
 persons, of a few officials of high rank in the Educa- 
 tion Department, being to destroy the voluntary 
 schools by compelling them to provide much larger 
 incomes for their maintenance than is convenient, 
 or in some cases possible ; or otherwise to reduce 
 them to such a state of comparative inefficiency as 
 would bring discredit upon the Church with which 
 they are connected. 
 
 The financial pressure thus caused has compelled 
 some schools to succumb. Where the incumbent 
 was at all apathetic, or unpopular with his parishioners, 
 or where the landowners and wealthy parishioners, 
 from indifference to the kind of religious teaching 
 given, preferred Board schools, or where they desired 
 to compel some well-to-do neighbours, who would give 
 nothing voluntarily to support the existing schools, 
 to contribute towards the educational expenses of the 
 parish equally with themselves, voluntary schools 
 have had to be closed ; and during the twenty-four 
 years which have elapsed since the Education Act of 
 1870 the Church has lost 864 of her schools. In 1876, 
 when a Conservative Government was in power and 
 
LORD SANDON'S ACT 137 
 
 Lord Sandon ^ (the staunch friend of voluntary schools) 
 was Vice-President of the Education Department, a 
 measure of relief was passed through Parliament 
 which was intended to lighten the strain upon school 
 managers, and which has materially assisted many 
 schools. Previous Acts had limited the possible 
 amount of the Government grant to 1 5^-. per child in 
 average attendance, and to obtain that an equal sum 
 had to be raised by school-fees and voluntary sub- 
 scriptions. Now that the cost of elementary educa- 
 tion had so much increased, Lord Sandon's Act 
 secured to a school a grant of \ys. 6d. per child in 
 average attendance, if H.M. Inspector's Report 
 justified such a payment, without regard to money 
 locally contributed ; whilst it permitted a still higher 
 sum to be paid out of the Imperial Exchequer if 
 local funds were raised equal to the sum that might 
 thus be obtained. Moreover, in the Code introduced 
 by Lord Sandon in 1875, we find for the first time 
 what are technically known as * class subjects,' for 
 which a grant of 4^. or 2s. a head might be paid 
 according as the instruction proved to be good or 
 fair. In this provision originated a tripartite division 
 of ' standard,' ' class,' and ' specific ' subjects. By 
 * standard subjects ' the Code understood the rudi- 
 ments — reading, writing, and arithmetic — instruction 
 in which has always been obligatory. By ' class 
 subjects' are understood higher subjects of instruc- 
 tion, such as grammar, geography, and elementary 
 science, which, if taught at all, must be taught 
 throughout the school, and which are to be judged 
 
 ' Now Earl of Harrowby. 
 
138 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 and paid for, not according to the proficiency of each 
 individual scholar, but according to the proficiency of 
 classes as a whole. Instruction in one of these sub- 
 jects was compulsory, but no school was to be 
 required to take more than one. ' Specific subjects ' 
 are those more advanced subjects which may be 
 taught to individual scholars, and in which they 
 are to be individually examined, including mathe- 
 matics, various branches of science, and languages. 
 This provision, no doubt, raised the tone of the 
 teaching in some schools, and led eventually to some 
 schools of a more advanced type being brought 
 into existence, but it has had the unfortunate draw- 
 back of helping to confuse elementary with secondary 
 education ; and, whilst it provided for the intellectual 
 wants of some children who required higher instruc- 
 tion than could be found in an ordinary elementary 
 school, has done much less than its author desired 
 for improving the education of the great mass of 
 children attending elementary schools, as the time 
 they remain under instruction is barely sufficient to 
 indoctrinate them with the rudimentary subjects to 
 the extent that is desirable. Other changes were 
 during the same Administration introduced into the 
 Code which it is not necessary to particularise, as 
 they affected matters of detail and not questions of 
 principle. Vice-presidents who succeeded Lord 
 Sandon made great changes in the Code annually 
 issued for the guidance of managers and teachers in 
 organising and directing the schools under their care, 
 and of H.M. Inspectors in assessing the grants to 
 be awarded to them. Some of these changes were 
 
SCHOOL ATTENDANCE COMMITTEES 139 
 
 made to remove defects that had been complained of, 
 others to make manifest the educational zeal and 
 ability of a new chief of the Education Department ; 
 but most of them rendered the office of a school 
 manager or teacher more difficult to discharge 
 adequately, and inspired or fostered a feeling of 
 unrest and doubt as to the future. 
 
 Other important changes were made by this Act 
 of Lord Sandon's. Up to that time ( i Z'jG) compulsory 
 attendance could only be enforced by a School 
 Board. This power was now extended to places 
 where no School Board existed. School attendance 
 committees were to be formed. In boroughs they were 
 to be appointed by the Town Council ; in other places 
 by the Poor Law Guardians of the Union in which the 
 parish was situated, and they were to have the same 
 powers with respect to compelling attendance at school 
 as were possessed by School Boards. 
 
 Another change was rendered desirable in conse- 
 quence of an outcry raised by the Nonconformists. 
 By the 25th section of the Act of 1870, School Boards 
 were authorised to pay the fees of the children of 
 parents unable to pay them at Denominational schools. 
 This was represented as a serious grievance, and by 
 Lord Sandon's Act the duty of providing such school 
 fees was placed upon the Guardians of the Poor. There 
 were also additional facilities given to School Boards 
 to enable them to provide day industrial schools. 
 
 In 1880, when Mr. Mundella was in office, ad- 
 ditional provision was made for causing the enforce- 
 ment of compulsory attendance to be universal. An 
 Act was passed making the framing of bye-laws com- 
 
I40 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 pulsory, instead of optional, as it had previously been. 
 Beyond this, it made the requirements for attendance 
 at school more exacting. By the Act of i Zyd children 
 under ten were forbidden to take employment, and 
 those between ten and eleven could only be employed 
 on reaching a prescribed standard of education or 
 attendance ; and the Factories and Workshops Act 
 might have been held to permit half-time employment 
 without reference to bye-laws. The Act of 1880 did 
 something towards enforcing greater strictness, and 
 the educational requirements of the bye-laws of the 
 district were made applicable to half-timers. 
 
 And so matters went on. The number of schools 
 and children continually increasing, the cost of main- 
 taining them steadily advancing, the amount levied 
 in rates for Board schools growing larger and heavier 
 every year, the difficulty of sustaining voluntary 
 .schools being more severely felt, the teachers in all 
 schools perpetually complaining of the inadequate 
 efforts made to enforce compulsory attendance ; 
 whilst from all these causes there was an ever- 
 deepening sense of unrest, and a growing feeling 
 that the existing settlement of the education question 
 could not last. 
 
 Under these circumstances representations were 
 made to the Government that the time had come 
 when the whole question of elementary education 
 ought to be inquired into, .so that defects might be 
 amended ; and if fundamental alterations were needed 
 in the existing system, as was alleged in several 
 quarters, the grounds for such alterations might be made 
 known by an authority which people generally would 
 
THE ROYAL COMMISSION OF 1886 141 
 
 respect To meet this demand a Royal Commission 
 was issued in January 1886, consisting of twenty-three 
 members, of whom Viscount Cross was chairman. 
 This Commission reported in the earlier part of 1888, 
 fifteen of the members substantially agreeing with 
 the main Report, and eight others supplementing their 
 statement of agreement with some portions of the 
 Report with a long statement of points on which they 
 disagreed with it. 
 
 It may be interesting to give some of the more 
 important points on which this Commission reported. 
 There was the attendance of children at school, which 
 was found to be greatly increased. As the numbers 
 given include only the children who were in inspected 
 schools, it may be well to remember that in the earlier 
 years many attended private schools, of the quality 
 of which I have already. spoken. 
 
 Percentage of Children on the Registers 
 
 
 i Under five 
 
 Over eleven ' Over twelve 
 
 Over thirteen 
 
 1865 
 1870 
 
 1885 
 1886 j 
 
 15-17 
 
 15-89 
 
 9-67 
 
 9-56 
 
 1779 1 997 
 
 17-24 1 2-55 
 22-02 11-9 1 
 22-33 "-91 i 
 
 4-41 
 4-09 
 
 4-1 i 
 4-18 i 
 
 With regard to the cost of education Mr. Mundella 
 moved for a return for the years 1869 to 1884 show- 
 ing for each child in average attendance at voluntary 
 schools the amount expended, and the sources from 
 which the necessary income had been derived. It 
 was found that during the fifteen years the average cost 
 per child had risen from i/. ^s. ^d. to i/. I5.$-. 2</., the 
 
142 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 average grant from 9^. yd. to \6s. 4j^., the average 
 school fees from 8j. 4^. to \\s. 2d. ; while the 
 voluntary contributions per child in average attend- 
 ance fluctuated a good deal, beginning with ys. 3j^. 
 in 1869, rising to a maximum of 8j. ^\d. in 1877, and 
 thenceforward declining regularly with the increasing 
 numbers till it fell in 1884 to 6s. %\d. Since then 
 the cost of each child in average attendance in 
 voluntary schools has risen to i/. \Js. 6{d. in 1893, of 
 which i8j. i\d. came from Government grant, 2s. 4ld. 
 from school pence, and 6s. S^d. from voluntary con- 
 tributions ; IS. 5|</. from endowments in Church 
 schools, and the remainder from the fee grant and 
 miscellaneous assets. In Board schools the average 
 cost per child was 2/. 8s. i^d.^ of which 19^-. g^d. had 
 to be provided by the rates ; in London the cost of 
 each child's education was 3/. 5^. S^d., of which the 
 ratepayers had to furnish 2/. i6s. ii'^d. In 1893 the 
 number of children in average attendance in Church 
 schools was 1,821,696, and the sum expended by 
 the managers for the support of the schools was 
 3>379>629/. ; in Board schools the average attendance 
 was 1,739,993, and the sum expended on the main- 
 tenance of the schools was 4,1 10,410/., or more than 
 730,000/. in excess of the outlay on Church schools for 
 educating 80,000 fewer children. The total sum 
 raised by the School Boards by rates was 3,604,903/, 
 a large sum being required to discharge the cost of 
 erecting the schools, and for expenses of administra- 
 tion. 
 
 Speaking generally, the amount of school accom- 
 modation provided was found to be sufficient to supply 
 
TYRANNICAL EXERCISE OF POWER 143 
 
 the educational wants of the nation ; in some places 
 it was in excess of the local requirements, whilst in 
 others the perpetually increasing population demanded 
 from year to year the erection of new schools. The 
 chief grievance with respect to the supply of schools 
 arose from the consent of the local School Board 
 being required before a voluntary school could be 
 allowed to receive the annual grant from Government. 
 In some places this power had been tyrannically 
 exercised, notably at Dan-y-craig, a suburb of 
 Swansea, where the Roman Catholics had built a 
 school for children of their own faith living there, 
 which the Swansea School Board refused to recognise, 
 desiring to force these children to attend a Board school 
 although the parents strongly objected to the religious 
 teaching given in it. The remedy proposed was that 
 the determination with respect to new schools should 
 rest with the Education Department and not with 
 the local School Board. 
 
 An important question that had to be considered 
 was the amount of success obtained by existing 
 schools in imparting the instruction which they pro- 
 fessed to give. It is thus the Commission describes 
 its sense of the standard which ought to be attained, 
 and the amount of success achieved : ^ ' We are 
 bound, before entering upon the consideration of the 
 curriculum, to call attention to the fact that witnesses 
 of all classes testify to the imperfect hold of know- 
 ledge gained in elementary schools. It is obvious 
 that to teach a child to observe and think by proper 
 training of the mind will more effectually develop its 
 
 • Report, p. 133. 
 
144 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION ^ 
 
 capacity and faculties than premature initiation into 
 matters beyond its intellectual habits. We regard 
 this as one of the most important matters which we 
 have to investigate in connection with elementary 
 instruction, and we do not hesitate to affirm that a 
 thorough grounding in the rudiments of knowledge 
 is an essential condition of any national system which 
 is to secure permanent educational results. If these 
 permanent results fail to be attained in the case of 
 reading, writing, and arithmetic, which all children 
 on leaving school must, to some extent, keep in prac- 
 tice, it may be feared that knowledge of other subjects 
 not engaging their attention after they quit school 
 will evaporate, and thus much time devoted to such 
 subjects will be practically wasted.' * * Looked at 
 from all sides, it is plain that there is room for much 
 improvement in reading. We are of opinion that it 
 would be of advantage to increase, rather than to 
 diminish, the number of books to be read in each 
 standard, but that the spelling requirements should 
 be diminished ; and we think that, unless the scholars 
 are taught to read with ease, and acquire a taste for 
 reading, their school learning will not be followed up 
 in after life. It must be remembered that a child 
 who has thoroughly acquired the art of reading with 
 ease has within its reach the key of all knowledge, 
 and it will rest with itself alone to determine the 
 limits of its progress. Good reading is, however, at 
 the present time often sacrificed to instruction in 
 spelling. In a reading lesson the whole of the 
 teacher's attention should be concentrated on secur- 
 
 ^ Report, pp. 135, 136. 
 
THE ' THREE RS' IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 145 
 
 ing fluency and expression, and on interesting the 
 scholars in the subject-matter of the book. The art 
 of reading aloud is acquired largely by the ear, and 
 would be better taught by the teachers reading to 
 their scholars. It is manifest that, if children only 
 hear each other read, they will retain their old bad 
 habits. We strongly recommend the establishment 
 of school libraries as a material encouragement to the 
 habit of reading at home, and as forming important 
 aids to the school course of teaching in securing a 
 taste for reading.' 
 
 ^ ' The subject of writing in the Code includes 
 spelling also, and the two subjects are considered 
 jointly. But little evidence was given on the matter 
 of handwriting, although much was said about the 
 spelling. The fact appears to be that, whilst the teach- 
 ing of handwriting is assumed to be a comparatively 
 easy matter, the teaching of spelling is known to be 
 most difficult. If drawing were universally taught, 
 as we shall afterwards recommend, probably hand- 
 writing would receive more attention than it does, 
 with the result of its becoming both better in form 
 and more legible. The teaching of drawing has a 
 marked effect in improving the character of the 
 writing in elementary schools.' 
 
 ' With regard to arithmetic, Mr. Wild, an elemen- 
 tary teacher, complains that children in the first and 
 second standards are required to deal with figures far 
 too large for their comprehension, and urges that the 
 first lessons in arithmetic should be confined to 
 numbers within the ordinary purview of the children 
 
 ' Report, p. 136. 
 
 K 
 
46 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 themselves, instead of numbers of which they can 
 form no right conception. The problems set in the 
 examination cards are looked upon as too difficult, 
 and the tests themselves as very unequal ; and 
 although girls may pass in the subject of arithmetic, 
 yet they are often unable to apply their knowledge 
 to the simplest practical use, such as making out 
 little accounts for their parents, or calculating the 
 interest on small sums in the Post-office Savings 
 Bank book. Much time is said to be occupied with 
 mechanical and practically useless arithmetic, and 
 with unravelling arithmetical puzzles.' Upon the 
 various recommendations respecting the subjects to 
 be taught and the manner in which they should be 
 taught I need not enter, as my object is to give a 
 general view of the manner in which elementary 
 education in this country has reached its present 
 position, rather than the details of what has been 
 taught and suggestions for the improvement of 
 the instruction given. A full statement has been 
 already given of the scheme introduced by Mr. Lowe 
 for * payment by results,' which had been continued 
 with a few alterations in detail. Of this scheme, or 
 rather of the results of its working, the Report speaks 
 as follows : ^ ' Taken all together, the evidence of the 
 teachers amounts to a very heavy indictment against 
 the system of " payment by results." Many teachers 
 say that an intellectual teaching does not " pay," but 
 that the teachers have to work up to the hard-and- 
 fast line of the Code, and to study the individuality 
 of the inspector, so as best to prepare their children 
 
 * Report ^ pp. 179, 180. 
 
PA YMENT B V RESULTS ' CONDEMNED 147 
 
 for winning a high percentage of passes. The system, 
 it is alleged, has the effect of limiting the curriculum 
 of work taken up in a school, for practically a subject 
 which has no money value attached to it in the Code 
 is entirely passed by. The teachers say that the 
 method of "pricing the subjects " induces all parties to 
 look more to what can be earned than to what is good 
 for the scholars, and that it provides a stimulus not to 
 good teaching, but to " cram " with the view of getting 
 money. In this way, it is maintained, teachers have 
 become demoralised ; and, instead of their efforts 
 being directed mainly to the religious, moral, and 
 intellectual education of the children under their 
 care, they are led to consider first, and before all 
 other things, what will pay best, and how they can 
 make most money. In particular this system, it is 
 said, has led managers to form an exaggerated idea 
 of the importance of the percentage of passes, so 
 that to them the question of the number and per- 
 centage of passes is of far greater interest than 
 that of the children's intellectual welfare. It is said 
 that in treating with a teacher for a vacant appoint- 
 ment the manager's question is, " What percentage 
 have you passed, and what are the entries on your 
 parchment ? " and that under this state of things the 
 teacher's professional reputation is at stake, and 
 might suffer considerably. The system in existence 
 before 1862 was said to have resulted in dull children 
 being neglected, but to the present system is attri- 
 buted by the witnesses above referred to the opposite 
 evil of neglecting the brighter and more forward 
 children ; and, although its abolition might result in 
 
 K 2 
 
148 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 lessening the interest now felt in dull and backward 
 children, it would certainly, it is said, destroy at its 
 source what proves to be a " fountain of over- 
 pressure." ' 
 
 * We turn to the various opinions on this subject 
 which we have collected from the managers of ele- 
 mentary schools who have been called before us. 
 Some seem to be distinctly in favour of the retention 
 of the system of " payment by results," seeing in it the 
 only true guarantee that the State can have that the 
 education given is efficient, and that every one gets 
 his share of it. On the other hand, many managers 
 condemn this method of assessing the grant under its 
 present conditions almost as strongly as the teachers.' 
 
 ^ * On this subject the inspectors gave some very 
 important evidence, but they were by no means 
 unanimous in the opinions they expressed. The 
 effects of the system on the teachers they ad- 
 mitted to be sometimes bad, especially in fostering 
 the unhealthy competition among them for high per- 
 centages, and so leading teachers to work for a bare 
 pass — an evil, however, which some of these witnesses 
 affirm is being corrected by the merit grant' 
 
 ' We have also felt bound to consider, as bearing 
 upon our recommendations, the important evidence 
 which, coming from various quarters, testifies to the 
 disappointing fact that, under our present system, 
 though the results of the inspection of schools and 
 the examination of scholars may appear satisfactory, 
 many of the children lose with extraordinary rapidity 
 after leaving school the knowledge which has been so 
 
 » Report^ p. 182. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION SINCE 1870 M9 
 
 laboriously and expensively imparted to them. We 
 are thus led to believe that a system of " cram " with 
 a view to immediate results, which tends to check the 
 great advance made of late years in all our education 
 amongst all ranks, and threatens to destroy the love 
 of knowledge for its own sake, is prevailing more and 
 more — though under different conditions — in our 
 public elementary schools, and that, unless a large 
 change is now made, as the system must become in 
 working more rigid, so its evils will increase rather 
 than diminish.' Consequently the Commission recom- 
 mended that whilst ^ ' payments should be so made as 
 to avoid directing the managers' or teachers' attention 
 into earning the necessary income of the school ; . . . 
 the distribution of the Parliamentary grant cannot be 
 wholly freed from its present dependence on the 
 results of examination without the risk of incur- 
 ring greater evils than those which it is sought to 
 cure.' 
 
 On the religious instruction given in elementary 
 schools since 1870 I have not yet written. I will 
 continue to quote from the same Report, and give 
 the views of the Commissioners on this most im- 
 portant subject : ^ ' We now proceed to consider what 
 is the nature and value of the religious instruc- 
 tion actually given in all public elementary schools. 
 First, as regards voluntary schools, a comprehensive 
 answer drawn from official records can be given only 
 in the case of those Church of England schools which 
 are visited annually by the diocesan inspectors. 
 From the volume issued by the National Society, in 
 
 ' Report, p. 183. 2 iifid,^ p. 115. 
 
I50 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 which their Reports are collected, a very favourable 
 opinion would be gathered on the whole of the 
 quality of that instruction in the majority of the Church 
 of England schools reported on. Several witnesses 
 of wide experience have likewise been examined by 
 us as to the nature of the teaching given in these 
 schools. They entirely repudiate the idea which has 
 been sometimes put forward that it consisted com- 
 monly of committing to memory Church formularies 
 without explanation. It is usual, it appears, for the 
 diocesan inspector at his visit to suggest a syllabus 
 of instruction for the ensuing year, on which the 
 examination of the next year will be held, the parts 
 of Scripture selected for study or committal to 
 memory being such as seemed best to lend themselves 
 to the instruction of children in their faith and duty. 
 ' Secondly, as to Board schools, the returns made 
 to the Parliamentary inquiry form the only authori- 
 tative record of the nature of the religious instruction 
 given throughout the country in Board schools.' In 
 the great majority some religious instruction is given, 
 and there are wide diversities of opinion as to its 
 value. The Report says : ^ ' We are bound to state 
 that the Parliamentary returns show that in not a few 
 Board schools, which are returned as giving religious 
 instruction, or as having religious observances, the 
 religious teaching is confined to reading the Bible for 
 a few minutes at the opening of school, without note 
 or comment, to reciting the Lord's Prayer, or to other 
 very meagre provisions for the religious influence 
 over, or training of, the children.' It may be well to 
 
 ' Report^ p. 117. 
 
OF 
 
 RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN BOARD SCHOOLS 151 
 
 quote a few opinions respecting the religious teaching 
 given in Board schools. The Rev. J. Gilmore, Chair- 
 man of the Sheffield School Board, said : ' I think 
 that the present system has a tendency to lower the 
 importance of religion and morality in the estimation 
 of the children, because, in many cases, religion and 
 morality are entirely neglected.' But he goes on to 
 describe the system of religious instruction adopted 
 in Sheffield, and adds that the parents of the children 
 in Sheffield value the religious instruction given in 
 Board schools very highly. The Rev. Dr. Aston, 
 member of the Bradford School Board, thinks there is 
 a tendency in the present system to lower the im- 
 portance of religion and morality in the estimation of 
 managers, teachers, and scholars. The Rev. R. B. 
 Burges, a member of the Birmingham School Board, 
 said : ' I consider that in the Board schools the whole 
 religious and moral teaching is worthless. There is 
 no foundation for morals or religion.' With these 
 views I entirely agree, but it is only fair to quote 
 what witnesses said on the other side. Thus Mr. 
 A. C. Rogers, assistant-master of a London Board 
 school, says : ' I should not wish the public to infer 
 that the religious teaching and the moral training in 
 Board schools is inferior to that in the voluntary 
 schools. I do not think it is inferior. I think I do 
 the work of religious teaching under the London 
 School Board as well as I should have done in a 
 voluntary school.' Mr. Adams, head-master of another 
 Board school, thinks that the moral tone has distinctly 
 improved. The value of these testimonies in favour 
 of the religious teaching given in 1886 should be 
 
152 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 measured by the fact that some hundreds, if not 
 thousands, of the teachers under the London School 
 Board in 1 894 publicly protested against a circular, in 
 which the following instruction respecting the religious 
 teaching to be given in the London Board schools 
 was contained : * While following the syllabus which 
 is suggested to you yearly, you are at liberty to refer 
 to other parts of the Bible by which the principles of 
 the Christian religion may be elucidated and enforced. 
 These principles include a belief in God the Father 
 as our Creator, in God the Son as our Redeemer, and 
 in God the Holy Ghost as our Sanctifier. The 
 Board cannot approve of any teaching which denies 
 either the Divine or the human nature of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, or which leaves on the minds of the 
 children any other impression than that they are 
 bound to trust and serve Him as their God and 
 Lord.' But whilst thus explaining their wishes with 
 respect to religious teaching, the Board did not 
 venture to exclude from the ranks of the teachers in 
 their employ those who denied these fundamental 
 truths ; they merely promised to relieve them from 
 giving religious lessons, whilst they assured them 
 that their feeling unable to comply with these 
 instructions would not militate against their advance- 
 ment to better and more lucrative positions under 
 the Board. And it is also well to observe that by a 
 bye-law or regulation of the same Board no question 
 is to be asked of a teacher seeking employment 
 by the Board as to his religious belief, so that a 
 Christian or a heathen, a Roman Catholic or a Uni- 
 tarian, a Churchman or a Baptist, is equally eligible 
 
TEACHERS' SALARIES IN 1891 153 
 
 for any position, however important, under the London 
 School Board, if he is willing to undertake the duty 
 to give religious instruction to the scholars, though 
 he may not himself believe a word of what he is 
 teaching. 
 
 These extracts from the Report of a recent Royal 
 Commission on Education give a fair picture of the 
 present state of elementary education in this country. 
 There is provision for the instruction of every child, 
 there are compulsory powers to enforce attendance 
 which have achieved a very modified amount of 
 success ; the intellectual results cannot be described 
 as satisfactory ; whilst the moral and religious in- 
 struction given in most voluntary schools is good, 
 that which prevails in Board schools can never be 
 really good, as it cannot well be definite, whilst in 
 many it is worthless, and in some non-existent. 
 
 In an earlier part of these notes I have given the 
 amount of stipend that was paid to the teachers in 
 1 86 1 ; it may be well to show how this has since been 
 increased.^ ' The average salary of a certificated 
 master, which in 1870 was 94/. 2s. id.y is now (1891) 
 1 19/. i8i". ^d. ; that of a schoolmistress was 57/. i is. id. 
 in ,1870, and is now y6l. ys. ^d. In addition to their 
 other emoluments, 5,838 out of 17,799 masters, and 
 4,653 out of 26,616 mistresses, are provided with 
 residences, free of rent. These averages are calculated 
 upon the whole of the certificated teachers, whether 
 principal or additional. 
 
 * We may mention, with regard to the principal 
 teachers in the Metropolitan district, that in the past 
 
 ' Report of Committee of Council on Education, 189 1, p. xxvi. 
 
1 54 ELEMENTAR Y ED UCA TION 
 
 year the average salary of 368 masters in voluntary 
 schools was 152/. \Zs. 2^., and that of 379 masters in 
 Board schools 283/. \os. \od. ; while 'j^i mistresses 
 in Board schools enjoyed an average income of 
 199/. lis. 5//., as compared with 90/. 18^-. 6<:/., that of 
 797 teachers in voluntary schools. The salaries of 
 eleven masters in voluntary schools, and of 167 in 
 Board schools, amounted to 300/. a year and upwards, 
 while three mistresses in voluntary, and 366 in Board 
 schools, had salaries of 200/. and upwards.' 
 
 The improvements recommended by the Edu- 
 cation Commission have been to a certain extent 
 adopted by the Codes that have been since issued, 
 and the system of payment by results has been 
 greatly modified. Some of the proposals required 
 for their adoption an Act of Parliament, and cannot 
 be effected without this. 
 
 The extent to which the teachers in elementary 
 schools have received the benefit of being educated 
 at a training college came prominently forward in 
 1890, and it was thought desirable by the Education 
 Department to take a step in advance to secure this 
 advantage to a still larger number. The present 
 state of the case is thus set forth in the Report of the 
 Committee of Council for 1894:^ 'The extent to 
 which the training colleges have contributed to the 
 present supply of efficient teachers in England and 
 Wales is shown by the fact that of 19,995 masters 
 employed in schools reported upon last year, 13,183, 
 or 65-93 pel* cent, had been trained for two years, and 
 803, or 4'02 per cent, for less than two years ; while 
 
 ' Report of Committee of Council on Education, 1894, p. 24. 
 
DAY TRAINING COLLEGES 155 
 
 609, or 30*05 per cent, were not so trained. In like 
 manner, of 29,345 schoolmistresses, 13,650, or 46*52, 
 had been trained for two years ; 766, or 261 percent., 
 for less than two years; and 14,929, or 50*87 percent, 
 were not trained in colleges. Of the teachers, however, 
 who, from whatever cause, have not attended a train- 
 ing college, a considerable portion cannot, except in a 
 technical sense of the word, be classed as untrained, 
 having been under the superintendence of some of 
 our best teachers, passed through the pupil teachers' 
 course, and served as assistants in large schools, 
 before passing the examination for a certificate, and 
 undertaking independent charges.' 
 
 To give additional opportunities for training 
 teachers the Code was altered in 1890 so as to admit 
 of day training colleges, all those previously in ex- 
 istence having been residential colleges. Further 
 reasons for the innovation were the complaints on the 
 part of members of School Boards, and the advocates 
 of undenominational religious teaching, that all the 
 training colleges were in the hands of Church people, 
 or the members of some other religious communion, 
 and that it was not just to compel them to send their 
 students to colleges of whose religious teaching they 
 disapproved. Attempts were made to force a con- 
 science clause upon the residential training colleges 
 which would have been injurious to their general 
 teaching. The day training colleges were designed 
 to meet this grievance, whilst leaving existing institu- 
 tions with their present freedom. The conditions on 
 which these colleges were founded are thus laid down 
 in the new Code (1891) : 'A day training college 
 
156 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 must be attached to some university or college of 
 university rank. The authorities of a day training 
 college must be a local committee, who will be held 
 responsible for the discipline and moral supervision 
 of the students, and for their regular attendance at 
 professorial or other lectures. There must be a 
 practising school, in which the students may learn 
 the practical exercise of their profession, within easy 
 reach. The recognised students are called Queen's 
 scholars ; and a grant will be made annually, through 
 the local committee, of 25/. to each male, and of 20/. 
 to each female Queen's scholar, and a grant of 10/. 
 to the committee in respect of each Queen's scholar 
 enrolled for continuous teaching throughout the year.' 
 The ordinary length of the course of teaching at a 
 training college is fixed at two years, but in excep- 
 tional cases it may be concluded in one year or ex- 
 tended to three years. At the day training colleges 
 there is no provision made for any religious teaching. 
 Residential colleges are allowed to receive some day 
 students in addition to those living in the college. 
 In 1893 there were 1,022 male and 1,201 female 
 students in Church residential colleges, and 406 
 male and 780 female students in all other residential 
 colleges ; in the following year the number of male 
 students in Church colleges had increased by 11, 
 and of female students by 14 ; in all other colleges 
 there had been an addition of 2 male and 14 female 
 students. In the day training colleges there were 
 286 male and 278 female students in 1893, and 388 
 male and 373 female students in 1894 ; besides these, 
 there were 60 female, students in 1893, and Sy in 
 
THE CONTROL OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 157 
 
 1894, attending for instruction at residential col- 
 leges. 
 
 The question is sometimes asked, What amount of 
 control over the education given in elementary schools 
 does the Committee of Council on Education retain in 
 return for the grants it makes ? It is not difficult to 
 give a reply that will show how complete the control 
 is that the Department reserves for itself. It insists 
 upon all the schools being built upon plans approved 
 by its architect, and that no alterations shall be made 
 without its consent ; whilst all changes or improve- 
 ments that it requires, however costly, shall be made. 
 To none of these purposes does it contribute a farthing. 
 It requires that no teacher shall be employed who has 
 not its approval, and that the staff of teachers shall be 
 in accordance with the rules it lays down. The time- 
 table of lessons must be approved by its inspectors, 
 and the various classes must be advanced accord- 
 ing to standards that it imposes. It appoints the 
 hours during which the school must be kept open. 
 It examines all the scholars, the school accounts, 
 the school buildings, and the extent to which its 
 commands have been obeyed, annually. And if all 
 these requirements have not been fully obeyed, it 
 refuses to pay any grants towards the school main- 
 tenance. All that is left to the option of the 
 managers of voluntary schools is the selection of the 
 teachers out of those whom the Department has pro- 
 nounced qualified and the ordering of the religious 
 teaching that maybe given ; but the Department insists 
 that such teaching shall only be imparted during the 
 hours it appoints for the purpose, and under the con- 
 ditions it imposes in a conscience clause. 
 
158 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 There is still one more important change to record. 
 From the time that education had been made com- 
 pulsory there have been those who have insisted that it 
 ought to be free. They urged that it was not just to 
 enforce the attendance of the children of the poor at 
 school, unless at the same time they were freed from 
 the necessity of paying for that which they were 
 compelled to have, whether they desired it or not. 
 The Education Commission had almost unanimously 
 rejected a proposal to make education free, for they 
 held that it was not less for the good of the child 
 than for that of the State that he was compelled to 
 go to school, and that the parents' sense of responsi- 
 bility would be weakened if the State took upon 
 itself the obligation of providing the cost. 
 
 So far back as October 1885 Lord Salisbury had 
 made it clear, by a speech delivered at Newport, that 
 the thought of free education was prominently before 
 his mind. He then said : ^ ' I have one matter now 
 to talk of, and that is the question of free education. 
 I think — and in this I believe I have the singular and 
 unusual felicity of being in accord with Mr. Gladstone 
 — that this question cannot be dealt with in the 
 summary way that Mr. Chamberlain has dealt with 
 it. No doubt the fact of the compulsory character of 
 education does give to the poor of the country a very 
 considerable claim. If the law says they shall have 
 education, and they are unable to pay without enor- 
 mous difficulty, then there is reason why they should 
 be assisted ; but they are assisted under the present 
 law, and I do not think we should make presents of 
 
 ' School Guardian^ 1885, pp. 693, 694. 
 
LORD SALISB VR V ON RELIGIO US ED UCA TION 1 59 
 
 large sums of public money to people perfectly com- 
 petent to pay for the education of their children. I 
 should like to help the poor more liberally, and to 
 enforce education without undue hardship ; but I 
 should shrink before I gave every subject of the 
 Queen, whether rich or poor, the right to have his 
 children educated at the public expense. I do not 
 see any reason for adding to the public burdens, and 
 I think it will be some time before the taxpayers 
 agree to such a proposition. As to religious educa- 
 tion, which Mr. Morley desires to get rid of, it is one 
 of our most cherished privileges. I am not speaking 
 for my own denomination alone. What I claim I 
 would extend equally to the Nonconformists of Wales 
 or the Roman Catholics of Ireland. But I do claim 
 that whatever Church or form of Christianity they 
 belong to, they should be given the opportunity to 
 educate the people in the belief of Christianity which 
 they profess, instead of giving them a lifeless, boiled- 
 down, mechanical, unreal religious teaching which is 
 prevalent in Board schools. Believe me, the essence 
 of true religious teaching is that the teacher should 
 believe that which he teaches, and should be deliver- 
 ing, as he believes, the whole message of truth. 
 Unless there is that sympathetic, that magnetic 
 feeling established between the children and teachers, 
 that the teacher is dealing honestly with them, the 
 public will believe that the religious teaching is a sham. 
 Therefore I would give the utmost freedom that can be 
 given to all denominations in this country to teach 
 as they believe, and that which they esteem the highest 
 truths of the Christianity they profess. You have 
 
i6o ELEMENTAR V EDUCA TION 
 
 heard statements of corruption, and you have heard 
 proposals of legislation by which it was hoped that 
 such corruption could be stemmed. There is only 
 one remedy for such corruption, and that is, the true 
 teaching of the principles of Christianity. I ask you 
 to defend, as children of your country, the right of 
 our children to be taught the whole truth, and to be 
 brought up as Christians, as we think they should, 
 without any theories of side influence in secular 
 doctrines being allowed to enter and diminish and 
 frustrate the highest privileges that we as Christians 
 possess.' 
 
 At Nottingham in 1889 Lord Salisbury, then 
 Prime Minister, practically reaffirmed what he had 
 said in Newport four years before, and treated the 
 question of free education as one for the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer to decide — as financial, and not as 
 one in which a great principle was at stake. It was 
 therefore no surprise when in the session of 1891 
 Lord Salisbury's Government introduced a Bill for 
 making education free. The terms proposed were that, 
 wherever an elementary school ceased to charge a fee, 
 the State would pay \os. per annum for the education 
 of each child ; and that, where the customary fee had 
 been more than lOi-., then the State would provide that 
 amount annually on condition that the fee charged 
 to the scholar was diminished by that sum. At 
 the same time a clause was inserted in the Bill em- 
 powering any parent to demand free education for 
 his child, and if this could not otherwise be furnished 
 a School Board was to be called into existence. By 
 this Act the schools in villages and agricultural dis- 
 
THE FREE EDUCATION BILL i6i 
 
 tricts and in the poorest parts of large towns were 
 materially benefited, as the fee charged in them was 
 ordinarily only a penny a week, and never more than 
 twopence. In the manufacturing and mining dis- 
 tricts where the wages were high, and in many 
 schools in large towns that were frequented by the 
 children of artisans and tradesmen, the case was 
 different. There the fees required had been high, 
 and though the Government fee grant allowed them 
 to lower their charge, yet they were unable to con- 
 tinue successfully to make a demand for payment, as 
 some parents insisted upon not paying ; and an 
 organised society sent emissaries into neighbourhoods 
 where voluntary schools charged fees to incite parents 
 to demand free education, and if this could not 
 otherwise be obtained, to insist upon a School Board 
 being formed, or an additional Board school being 
 erected. 
 
 To make the matter press still more heavily upon 
 the voluntary schools, the Education Department 
 insisted upon extensive and costly improvements 
 being made in the schools, and expensive additions to 
 the staff and school furniture, on account of the larger 
 sums received by the managers from the State, for- 
 getting that free education was decreed, not for the 
 benefit of the managers, but for that of the parents, 
 and that the school finances were often injured by 
 the change. This was clearly brought out in the 
 debate on the Bill in the House of Lords, and also 
 the motives that led to its introduction. The Duke 
 of Argyll said : * * The noble Marquis at the head of 
 
 ' Hansard^ vol. ccclv. p. 1365. 
 
i62 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 the Government has very forcibly explained what 
 his views and the views of the Government were in 
 taking up this question. " The thing must be done, 
 let us do it, because we can make the best of it upon 
 what we think the right system for adoption." They 
 thought it was better the thing should be done by 
 them than by others not so friendly to the voluntary 
 system. The first object of the Government, I 
 apprehend, and it has been avowed by the noble 
 Marquis, was to save the voluntary system.' 
 
 Lord Salisbury here interposed : ' That is not the 
 main object of the Bill. The main object of the Bill 
 is to relieve parents.' 
 
 Practically the Bill was accepted by both sides of 
 the House, so that there was little or no discussion of 
 the principle involved in it. 
 
 When, however, the passing of the Bill was made 
 a reason for insisting upon a more costly staff ot 
 teachers, upon more expensive appliances for educa- 
 tion, upon additions, alterations, and improvements to 
 the school buildings, the position of the managers of 
 voluntary schools became more difficult than ever. 
 In addition to the more than 600,000/. annually raised 
 by Church people for the maintenance of their schools, 
 they have been compelled to contribute for the pur- 
 poses just named an additional sum that cannot be 
 estimated at less than three-quarters of a million. 
 The resources of the National Society have been 
 severely strained ; but, happily, through assistance 
 coming from some unexpected quarters, they have 
 been able to meet liberally the excessive demands 
 made upon them. There can, however, be no question 
 
THE ARCHBISHOPS' COMMITTEE 163 
 
 that the liberality of the friends of Church education 
 (often heavily taxed for the support of Board schools 
 which they dislike exceedingly) has been put to a 
 very severe test, and one that cannot be expected to 
 continue indefinitely. 
 
 In consequence of this pressure the two Arch- 
 bishops, at the request of a large representative 
 meeting held at the National Society's rooms, and 
 summoned by its Committee, appointed a Committee 
 of experts to consider what steps ought to be taken 
 to place the education of the country upon a more 
 satisfactory basis, and to give assurance that the 
 religious instruction desired by a considerable and 
 important portion of the community should be con- 
 tinued. 
 
 This Committee met, and after long deliberation 
 recommended, in addition to some important allevia- 
 tions in the present state of things, that the Education 
 Department should undertake in England, as it already 
 does in Ireland, the whole cost of the teaching staff 
 of the schools. 
 
 This proposal is now before the country, and it 
 remains to be seen what will be done with it. It is 
 evident that some leading statesmen have grasped 
 the importance of the question, and are fully alive to 
 the fact that jealousy of the Church and her influence 
 has so blinded the eyes of a large portion of an im- 
 portant political party, that they are unable to see 
 that the principle of religious liberty, for which they 
 profess to have been fighting all their lives, demands 
 that Church people and others who desire a definite 
 religious education for the children of the poor of their 
 
 L2 
 
i64 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 own communions should have their demands com- 
 plied with. 
 
 It really seems as though we were now standing 
 at the parting of ways with respect to this great 
 question of education. One path leads to a fair 
 adjustment of the question, and the providing so 
 much pecuniary help by the State as is necessary to 
 enable the Denominational schools of the country to 
 keep up a vigorous and efficient existence. The 
 other path leads to a system of secular education, by 
 which the spiritual condition of England would be 
 reduced to the miserable level into which it has fallen 
 in France. 
 
 If we summarise the steps by which the present 
 state of things has been reached, it will be seen 
 that, from a religious point of view, it is far from 
 encouraging. The first step was to take the direc- 
 tion of education out of the hands of the religious 
 bodies, and especially of the Church, which had done 
 all that had been done up to that time for the cause 
 of elementary education. The administration of 
 State help that was at first placed in the hands 
 of the religious bodies, as represented by the Na- 
 tional Society and the British and Foreign School 
 Society, and was consequently limited to schools in 
 which religious teaching was given, was transferred 
 to the Education Department in 1839. The attempt 
 was then made not merely to place schools in which 
 no religious teaching was given amongst those to be 
 assisted by the State, but to commence a system of 
 indefinite religious teaching in a normal college and 
 schools supported out of public funds. Against the 
 
THE NEAREST APPROACH TO LIBERTY 165 
 
 latter part of this attempt the conscience of the 
 nation revolted, and it was defeated. Then, by a 
 series of slight unobtrusive changes, the control of 
 popular education was gradually placed more and 
 more in the hands of the Education Department ; 
 and whilst the religious teaching was left free under 
 the direction of the religious communities, the entire 
 ordering of the secular instruction was secured for 
 the Education Department and permanently handed 
 over to them in return for the assistance furnished 
 to the schools out of the Imperial Exchequer, which 
 could not be replaced by voluntary benevolence if it 
 should be withdrawn. 
 
 This system, in spite of its dangers and difficulties, 
 was the nearest approach we have ever had to real 
 religious liberty in the matter of elementary educa- 
 tion. For all were placed on an equal footing. The 
 State did net say to any sect or party, * We will provide 
 at the cost of the community for the erection and 
 maintenance of schools of which you approve,' as it 
 has since done to the friends of undenominational 
 religion and secularists, 'whilst we will treat all others 
 as though permission definitely to teach the religion 
 of the Gospel was a luxury for which all who desire 
 it must be prepared to pay liberally.' 
 
 This fairly liberal system was continued till 1870, 
 when by the Act of that year a new class of schools 
 was called into existence, from which definite religious 
 teaching was excluded by Act of Parliament, but 
 which the local authorities were empowered, if they 
 were so disposed, to make purely secular. The effect 
 of this has been to create a number of Boards, with 
 
i66 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 many of whom the object has apparently been to 
 crush out voluntary schools in which religious teach- 
 ing is given, and to occupy their places with schools 
 in which undenominational religious teaching might 
 be given, or all religious instruction omitted. And for 
 the support of these schools all alike are rated — those 
 who approve and those who detest the religious or non- 
 religious teaching given in them. Recent discussions 
 about the religious teaching given in the schools of the 
 School Board for London show that the feeling with 
 respect to such teaching amongst many of those on 
 whom it devolves to give it has not unnaturally fallen 
 to a much lower level than was the position it held 
 twenty-five years since, and probably the feeling in 
 London is shared by School Board teachers in other 
 parts of the country. And then as a climax to the 
 whole, a system of Training Colleges for teachers 
 has been invented in which no provision is made 
 for imparting religious instruction to the students. 
 Apparently the leading motive in this downgrade 
 course has been jealousy of the Church, entertained by 
 some from their dislike to her dogmatic teaching, and by 
 others from a desire to weaken her political influence. 
 There are, happily, signs of a reaction against the 
 indefinite religious teaching given in most Board 
 schools, and the further extension of the Board School 
 system to which I feel that I ought to call attention. 
 Recent elections of members of School Boards have 
 shown a desire on the part of the ratepayers of many 
 important towns to substitute men who desire to make 
 education religious for those who favour an opposite 
 system. Besides this, the leaders of the Conservative 
 
MR, BALFOUR ON VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS 167 
 
 party have spoken more openly and decidedly on this 
 subject than has been commonly done in recent years. 
 On the loth January 1895 Mr. Balfour said at Man- 
 chester : ' Some people appear to think that the 
 voluntary school is the relic of an ancient system, 
 permitted as a matter of compromise to remain, 
 tolerated by Parliament, submitted to by the Depart- 
 ment, but altogether out of harmony with the needs 
 and requirements of a progressive community — an 
 instrument of education which in process of time shall 
 be known on one side as of an antiquated pattern, 
 and worn out by long use. I take precisely the 
 opposite opinion. In my view the normal education, 
 the normal machinery for education required alike by 
 the parent and by the community, is the voluntary 
 school. I do not say that there ought not to be — I 
 have no attack to make on— a School Board system. 
 In our present unhappy condition of public divisions 
 on religious questions, in the impossibility which some 
 districts may find of obtaining the requisite funds for 
 having voluntary schools, it is necessary that a locality 
 in default of voluntary schools should provide the 
 necessary accommodation by Board schools. But I 
 entirely deny that the Board school is the normal and 
 proper system of managing education. I consider 
 that it is, and ought to be, merely the supplement to 
 voluntary schools when voluntary schools fail to do 
 their duty. The Education Department, and the Min- 
 ister who presides over it, is bound by the very 
 necessities of his position to look after the secular 
 education of the children, and their secular education 
 alone. If he can show Parliament in his annual 
 
i68 ELEMENTAR Y EDUCA TION 
 
 statement that he has screwed up the standard of 
 learning, that he has done this, that, and the other to 
 improve the Code, that school buildings have been 
 added to in this, that, and the other way, he is sup- 
 posed to be a Minister who has fulfilled, and more than 
 fulfilled, his duty. He has deserved well of the 
 education lovers of the country, and more cannot be 
 asked of him. As head of the Education Department 
 more cannot be asked of him, but as a statesman, and 
 as a citizen, in my opinion, a great deal more can be 
 asked of him. If my diagnosis of the education 
 question be correct, if it be the wish of the great mass 
 of the parents of this country that their children 
 should have a religious education, if it be one of the 
 highest, if not the highest, interest of the State that 
 the children should receive such an education, then 
 not merely tolerance, not merely fairness, not merely 
 hard justice to the voluntary schools, should be done 
 by the Minister of Education, but he ought to treat 
 them tenderly, lovingly, as a most important part of 
 the great division of education which is under his 
 control, as the part of the machinery which, owing to 
 circumstances to which I will allude in a moment, 
 it is most difficult to deal with, a part of the 
 machinery which has not behind it the mechanical 
 support of the rates, but which, however hard it may 
 be to keep it in full working order, up to all the re- 
 quirements of the time, is nevertheless that part of 
 our system for teaching the young, for making 
 good men by making educated children, which is the 
 most important part we have at our disposal at the 
 present time. Nothing makes me more indignant 
 
THE DESERTS OF VOLUNTARY SCHOOLS 169 
 
 when I listen to these debates, the debates which take 
 place partly in the newspapers, partly in the House of 
 Commons, upon this subject than to hear the line of 
 tolerance, sometimes of hostility, with which the 
 voluntary schools are treated. I agree that if volun- 
 tary schools do not represent great voluntary effort, 
 they will probably lose their value and their efficiency. 
 But while they represent great voluntary effort, while 
 they are the outward and visible sign of a great 
 feeling in the country among parents that their 
 children should be educated in the faith of their fathers, 
 then they deserve, and ought to receive, something 
 more than this bare treatment. And will anybody 
 deny that the voluntary schools of this country answer 
 to the requirements which I have just enumerated ? 
 Why, I believe at this moment out of every five 
 children in England two only are educated in Board 
 schools, while three are educated in voluntary schools. 
 I believe that since the Education Act was passed by 
 Mr. Forster in 1870 the number of voluntary schools 
 has very nearly doubled, in spite of the competition 
 of Board schools. I believe the number of scholars 
 in these schools has more than doubled. At this 
 moment I believe the annual subscription given to 
 voluntary schools is more than three-quarters of a 
 million, and the capital invested, if my memory serves 
 me rightly — I have not the figures by me — the capital 
 invested in school buildings and otherwise is more 
 than eight millions.' Mr. Balfour also said : * I say 
 that the two interests of voluntary schools and the 
 ratepayers are conjoint, and that at this moment the 
 voluntary schools in all these districts where they are 
 
I70 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 brought into competition with Board schools are in 
 the extremest peril, and that it is a peril which no 
 citizen of this country interested in secular education, 
 interested in religious education, interested in keeping 
 down the rates even, can contemplate without some- 
 thing like dismay. I firmly believe that unless the 
 Education Department recognises that one of its 
 duties is to keep the voluntary schools alive^ that one 
 of its duties is not merely to treat voluntary schools 
 with bare equity, with naked justice, but with that 
 kind of assistance which may be required by their 
 difficulties, we shall be face to face with the ex- 
 tinction of an amount of voluntary effort which at 
 this moment is doing incalculable good, not merely 
 to the cause of secular education, not merely to the 
 cause of one religious denomination, but to the 
 cause which is greater than the interests of any 
 religious denomination, which soars far above the 
 needs of this or that sect, which may influence the 
 whole future course of the history of this country, 
 which may mould for good or for ill the destinies of 
 the lives of the generation now growing up around us ; 
 and I believe that at the present moment there is no 
 task awaiting solution at the hands of the Government 
 of this country which requires more of the statesman's 
 anxious care, which presents greater difficulties, or 
 which is of greater importance.' 
 
 Lord Salisbury, in a speech already referred to, 
 speaks in the same strain, He said : * The worst of 
 knocking down the formularies — the walls — is that 
 any one can get in. The worst is that, not only the 
 doctrines which only belong to advanced Christian 
 
THE COWPER-TEMPLE CLAUSE 17: 
 
 teaching may be shut out of consideration if you 
 strike down all formularies, but you have no 
 guarantee that teachings of an unsound character 
 upon doctrines that are absolutely fundamental and 
 essential to the Christian religion will not be taught ; 
 and, as you know well, that is not a theoretical 
 difficulty. You know by the excitement in which 
 the Church was cast in this town during the winter 
 that it was believed — I will not go further here than 
 that — it was believed, and extensively believed, that 
 efforts were being made, under cover of the Cowper- 
 Temple clause, to deny in teaching, not only those 
 more advanced doctrines to which I have referred, 
 and which concern the large majority of Dissenters, 
 but essential doctrines, without which, in our judg- 
 ment, the Christian religion cannot be taught — which 
 it is essential to the very existence of Christian teach- 
 ing should be maintained. Now that is the difficulty 
 to which the Cowper-Temple clause has brought us, 
 and to which it was bound to bring us. There is in 
 it, with great merits as a compromise, that essential 
 insincerity which, in the long run, will almost be 
 certain to raise again the religious struggles of which 
 I have spoken. The result is that large masses of 
 the Church of England are in a state of apprehension 
 and fear with respect to the teaching of the doctrines 
 which they value above everything, and feel that, as 
 the Bishop said, there is no guarantee that in Board 
 schools the Christian belief, as they have accepted it, 
 in its essence, will be taught. And it is not con- 
 fined to the Church of England. You know that the 
 Roman Catholics have from the first rejected this 
 
\n ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 compromise altogether. You know that the Jews 
 have rejected it with so much energy that they have 
 obtained special treatment for themselves. I saw 
 the other day that a great lawyer said that the prin- 
 cipal use of a trustee was to commit judicious in- 
 fractions of his trust. I think perhaps we may 
 imitate that by saying the principal use of local 
 authorities is to commit judicious infractions of Acts 
 of Parliament. But certain it is that very judicious 
 infraction has been committed in the case of the 
 Jews, and for the sake of liberty of conscience I am 
 heartily glad it has been done ; but I should like 
 that tenderness for liberty of conscience to be 
 extended to rather larger communities. Now that 
 state of things — the fact that large bodies of Christians 
 dislike the present educational law — makes me exhort 
 all those who look on the rivalry of Board schools as 
 dangerous and perhaps fatal antagonists of the efforts 
 of voluntary schools, not to trust too much to the 
 permanence of the present Board school system in 
 the matter of religious teaching. I do not say that 
 a change is immediately impending ; on the contrary, 
 I should say that some time must elapse before men's 
 opinions on the subject have sufficiently matured, and 
 they have sufficiently considered in the light, not only 
 of our own experience, but the experience of other 
 communities, in Canada and elsewhere, the nature of 
 the religious difficulty and the best means by which 
 it is to be met. Speaking of the idea to which I 
 should tend, not of a measure, for which I could pro- 
 vide any immediate machinery, but my own ideal is 
 that that system which would enable each man to 
 
THE ALLOCATION OF RATES 173 
 
 pay his rates for the teaching of his own religion is 
 the sound system. But I am anxious to make it 
 clear that I am fully conscious of the enormous 
 practical difficulties which at present attend the 
 adoption of any such plan, and that the many 
 educational authorities with whom I have talked on 
 this matter, though I think the majority of them 
 agree that this is the truer and better solution, yet 
 all see how hard in the present state of things it will 
 be to approximate to such a result. Any such effort 
 must be based on a general agreement among the 
 community that it is only by such a plan that the 
 principles of true religious liberty can be maintained, 
 and we shall have to pass some time yet before we 
 are all of us fully convinced that the compromises 
 which have been attempted will not permanently do 
 our work, and that we must fall back on sounder 
 principles if we wish to erect a stable and lasting 
 structure. But these observations are rather directed 
 to induce you to have good hope, and not to measure 
 the end of your efforts by the disappointments or 
 difficulties of the hour that is passing now. I believe 
 that the breach of the law to which I have referred — 
 if it be a breach— as to the education of the Jews is 
 the germ out of which the future educational policy 
 in this country is likely to spring ; but we have to 
 look at the present. We have to see that the 
 interests and the efforts of those who come after are 
 not jeopardised or compromised by our faintness of 
 heart or weakness of effort. It will depend on us, 
 and upon our maintaining the voluntary schools in 
 their strength and in the purity of their teaching, 
 
174 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 whether those who come after us are in a position to 
 insist for the Church upon the full rights of conscience 
 in any settlement that is ultimately arrived at. You 
 have to maintain the standard. It is for you to show 
 the ideal to which we tend. It is for you to show 
 that the teaching of Christianity, if it is to be given 
 earnestly, must be given altogether. It is an intoler- 
 able idea that the State should come to us, like the 
 Censor of the Russian Government, and stamp out 
 such parts of our religion as do not suit its secular 
 notions. This we can never suffer. With such an 
 arrangement we can never be content ; and the more 
 it is attempted by those who are opposed to us, if it 
 is attempted, to work the existing system in such a 
 sense, the more certainly they are hurrying the exist- 
 ing system to its doom.' 
 
 Besides these utterances of statesmen, which show 
 a current of thought that is most interesting and 
 important to us at the present time, it may also be 
 well to notice schemes for legislation that have been 
 made public by persons less prominently known in 
 political life, but who are more or less representa- 
 tive. Last year a scheme was presented to the 
 Diocesan Board of Education in Manchester by 
 a member of that body, which was not approved by 
 them, but which was allowed to, be made public, 
 that those interested in the subject might be made 
 acquainted with a mode of dealing with the generally 
 acknowledged difficulty with respect to the main- 
 tenance of voluntary schools which was urged 
 by a well-known advocate of good elementary edu- 
 cation. The preamble states that '• Whereas the 
 
EDUCATIONAL LEGISLATIVE SCHEMES 175 
 
 Education Act 1891 (Section 5) provides for free 
 school accommodation for all who desire it, and 
 Section 8 enables a School Board to admit scholars 
 to its schools without requiring any fee, supple- 
 menting, as far as may be necessary, the " Fee 
 Grant" contributed by the Education Department 
 (in lieu of the school fees formerly paid by parents) 
 out of the local rates, but the said Act of 1891 
 does not provide for the opening of free places 
 in the voluntary schools by means of any such supple- 
 mental aid from the rates for the children attending 
 these schools, by which omission those parents who 
 desire that their children should be brought up in 
 accordance with their religious convictions are placed 
 at a serious disadvantage : 
 
 'And whereas it is just that the religious disabilities 
 thus created should be remedied, and all ratepayers' 
 children should be placed upon an equality in respect 
 of sharing in the rates which such ratepayers are com- 
 pelled to pay, irrespective of their religious convictions, 
 be it enacted, that the School Board of any district, in- 
 cluding the School Board for London, shall, upon the 
 written request of the managers of a public elemen- 
 tary school, situate within the district of such Board, 
 provide for the maintenance of such school in manner 
 hereinafter mentioned. 
 
 * In any case in which the schoolhouse is not 
 vested in the managers, or some or one of them, the 
 trustees shall concur in such request, and in case 
 there are no managers of such school, the trustees 
 shall have power alone to make such request as 
 aforesaid. 
 
176 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 ' A request shall be made at least six calendar 
 months prior to the expiration of the financial year 
 of the School Board, which shall be current at the 
 date of such request, but shall not take effect until 
 the expiration of the school year which shall be 
 current when, or shall expire at the same time as, 
 such notice shall expire. 
 
 •The school from and after the time when such 
 request shall take effect shall be under the manage- 
 ment of a body of managers, consisting of such 
 number of persons as the Education Department 
 shall in each case determine. 
 
 ' One third to be appointed by the trustees, who 
 may appoint themselves, or himself, or any other 
 person or persons. 
 
 * One third to be appointed by the parents (being 
 ratepayers) of the children whose names shall have 
 been upon the school registers for a period of not 
 less than three calendar months immediately preceding 
 the election, at a meeting to be summoned for the 
 purpose by the School Board. 
 
 * One third to be appointed by the School Board. 
 
 * The managers shall regulate the religious in- 
 struction to be given in the school in accordance 
 with the conditions contained in any instrument 
 declaring the trusts of the school, and if such instru- 
 ment shall contain no reference to religious instruction, 
 or there shall be no such instrument, then, in ac- 
 cordance with the tenets of the religious body or 
 denomination by which the school was controlled, 
 or with which it was connected at the time when such 
 request as aforesaid shall take effect, in either case 
 
THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 177 
 
 subject to the time-table to be approved by H. M. 
 Inspector. 
 
 'The managers shall appoint and remove all 
 teachers, but every appointment must be confirmed 
 by the School Board, and the School Board may 
 require the managers, upon cause assigned, to remove 
 any teacher. The appointment of the principal 
 teacher of each department must further be con- 
 firmed by the managers appointed by the trustees. 
 If the cause assigned for the removal of a teacher 
 shall appear to the managers to be insufficient, or if 
 any difference shall arise as to the appointment or 
 removal of a teacher, or in any case of any disagree- 
 ment between any of the parties upon any matter, 
 appeal shall be made to the Education Department, 
 whose decision shall be final. 
 
 * In cases where there is only one available school 
 in a School Board district, which school has not been 
 provided by a School Board, the managers shall, 
 wherever it is practicable, and notwithstanding any- 
 thing in any such instrument or in this Act contained, 
 provide for the religious instruction of all children 
 attending the school, and belonging to a religious 
 body or bodies other than that hereby contemplated, 
 either by the appointment of one or more assistant 
 teachers for the religious instruction of such children, 
 subject to the proviso that no religious catechism 
 or formulary which is distinctive of any particular 
 denomination shall be taught by such teacher ; or by 
 giving permission, upon the written request of any 
 parent or parents, to any minister of religion or other 
 person deputed by him to visit the school for the 
 
 M 
 
178 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 purpose of giving religious instruction to the children 
 of such parents ; or by both these methods, subject to 
 the same time-table. 
 
 ' Subject also to the general regulations of the 
 Board with regard to staff and expenditure, the School 
 Board shall receive all income from Government 
 grant and school fees, if any, and provide all the ex- 
 penses connected with the maintenance of the school, 
 including (but not so as to limit the liability of the 
 Board under the preceding words of this section) the 
 salaries of teachers, the cost of cleaning, lighting and 
 fuel, the supply, repair, and insurance of all furniture, 
 fixtures, fittings, and other articles ; and all payments 
 in respect of rents, taxes and rates, repairs, main- 
 tenance of the schoolhouse, and other outgoings 
 allowed by the Education Department as ordinary 
 expenditure. 
 
 * The trustees shall, from endowments, voluntary 
 contributions, or otherwise, defray the cost of all 
 structural alterations or additions which shall be 
 made on the order of the Education Department ; or 
 with the consent of the trustees on the recommen- 
 dation of the jmanagers, or of the School Board. 
 
 * Nothing herein contained shall be deemed to give 
 to the School Board any estate, right, or property in 
 the schoolhouse, or to prevent the trustees, or the 
 managers appointed by them, from using, or per- 
 mitting the use of the school, exclusive of the teacher's 
 house (if any), for any purpose for which it might, if 
 no such request as aforesaid had been made, have 
 lawfully been used when not actually required for 
 ordinary day school purposes, subject nevertheless 
 
TRUSTEES' POWER TO WITHDRAW 179 
 
 to trustees or managers (as the case may be) con- 
 tributing a fair proportion, according to the time of 
 user by them, of the cost of cleaning, lighting and 
 fuel, and the ordinary wear and tear of furniture, such 
 proportion to be settled in case of difference by arbi- 
 tration, under the Arbitration Act 1889. 
 
 * The trustees may at any time, by at least eigh- 
 teen calendar months' written notice, and expiring at 
 the end of a school year, withdraw the school from 
 the control of the body of managers herein constituted 
 and resume its management, and provide for its main- 
 tenance as a public elementary school, subject never- 
 theless to the trustees repaying to the School Board 
 the value of improvements (as hereinafter defined) 
 which have been made by the Board, such value, in 
 case of difference, to be settled by arbitration under 
 the Arbitration Act. For the purposes of this section 
 the following alone shall be deemed to be improve- 
 ments, and their value shall be ascertained, as herein- 
 after provided — namely : new furniture, fixtures or 
 fittings, supplied within fifteen years prior to the ex- 
 piration of such school year, and the value thereof 
 shall be the original cost, subject to a depreciation 
 allowance at the rate of 7 per cent, of such cost for 
 every year or portion of a year since the same were 
 supplied.' 
 
 It may be well to call attention to one important 
 matter with respect to this Bill. It provides in one- 
 school parishes, where the school is under the control 
 of denominational managers, that teaching for all 
 other bodies of religionists shall be arranged. But in 
 parishes or towns where there are only one or more 
 
1 80 ELEMENTAR V ED UCA TION 
 
 Board schools no provision is made for the religious 
 teaching of the children, beyond what at present 
 exists ; neither are any facilities proposed for giving 
 definite religious teaching to children in other Board 
 schools when the parents may desire it. 
 
 Another Education Bill which I would place 
 before my readers is that put forth by the Roman 
 Catholics. I copy the report of it given in the School 
 Guardian (January 19, 1895) : 
 
 * At a meeting of the Roman Catholic bishops 
 held on January 4, under the presidency of Cardinal 
 Vaughan, at the Archbishop's house, Westminster, a 
 report was received from the Committee appointed to 
 draw the outline of a Bill dealing with certain edu- 
 cational grievances felt by Roman Catholics. The 
 Committee was composed of five bishops, and the 
 Duke of Norfolk and five members of the Roman 
 Catholic School Committee. The following draft Bill 
 presented by the Committee was accepted unanimously 
 by the bishops as representing the measure they recom- 
 mend for adoption throughout School Board districts. 
 
 'Whereas undue competition is created in School 
 Board districts by the application of the education 
 rate for the support of one set of public elementary 
 schools, to the exclusion of all others, though carry- 
 ing on the same public elementary education under 
 the control of the Education Department ; and whereas 
 it is just and desirable that the legitimate demands of 
 parents in respect of the religious education of their 
 children should be recognised and satisfied, now 
 especially that the education of their children has 
 become by law compulsory, be it enacted as follows : 
 
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC SCHEME i8i 
 
 ' Clause I. In any district where a School Board is 
 established, in addition to any schools in receipt of 
 annual grants from the Education Department, a 
 public elementary school may be opened by any 
 person or persons providing funds for the purpose, 
 with the right of receiving support from the Educa- 
 tion Department and the School Board, subject to the 
 conditions following ; namely : 
 
 ' {a) That the founders produce to the Education 
 Department the signatures of the parents of thirty 
 children of school age, stating that they wish and 
 intend to send their children to the school so to be 
 opened. 
 
 ' {b) That they produce plans for a school of not 
 less than sixty places, in conformity with the regu- 
 lations of the Education Department, and undertake 
 to carry out these plans, 
 
 * {c) That they obtain certificates from the Depart- 
 ment stating this conformity, and subsequently that 
 the school has been erected and established in con- 
 formity with the approved plans, and with the re- 
 quirements of the Department. 
 
 ' {cT) That the school be a public elementary school 
 in accordance with the regulations mentioned in Sec- 
 tion 7 of the Elementary Education Act (1870), and 
 be conducted according to those regulations. 
 
 * {e) That a board of management of the school, 
 consisting of at least five persons, be appointed and 
 maintained, two of whom shall, in the first instance, 
 and afterwards as vacancies occur, be elected by the 
 votes of the majority of the parents or guardians of 
 children who are, at the time of voting, in attendance 
 
i82 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 at the school, and the other three shall be appointed 
 by the founder or founders, or trustees of the school ; 
 and in the case of a larger number of managers, 
 those elected by the parents or guardians shall be in 
 the same proportion at least to those appointed by 
 the founders or trustees as when the board of 
 management shall consist of five members as above. 
 *(/) That the founders or managers staff the 
 school with certified teachers, according to the 
 Department's regulations. 
 
 * (^) That the school be also open to a local in- 
 spector, if any, appointed by the School Board of the 
 district, and this local inspector shall have power to 
 inquire into the sanitary condition of the school, to 
 inspect the account books and registers, and report 
 thereon to the local education authority, who may at 
 discretion report to the Education Department as to 
 the due and efficient management of the school, or 
 the contrary. 
 
 ' Clause II. In any district where a School Board 
 rate is levied the managers of any public elementary 
 school now existing, or hereafter founded, and which 
 is approved by the Education Department, shall be 
 entitled, on compliance with such of the conditions 
 in Clause I. as are applicable, and on production of 
 H. M. Inspector's certificate of satisfactory examina- 
 tion and average attendance, and of such other docu- 
 ments probatory of satisfactory teaching in the school 
 as may be required by the Education Department for 
 all schools as the basis of the Government grant : — 
 
 * {a) To claim and receive from the district in which 
 such school is situated such sum per head for each 
 
EDUCATIONAL CRISIS IMMINENT 183 
 
 scholar certified for as shall be equal to the amount 
 per head expended by the district out of the rates in 
 its own Board schools on the teaching of its scholars. 
 In this amount all the Board school's outgoings on its 
 public elementary schools shall be included, except 
 expenditure in erecting buildings, or on repairs or 
 alterations of buildings. 
 
 ' {b) And, further, in lieu of rent for school building, 
 now legally chargeable by the managers of voluntary 
 schools, to claim and receive an annual allowance 
 for each scholar certified for, equal to interest at 2^ 
 per cent, per annum, on the capital amount per scholar 
 expended by the School Board in providing school 
 accommodation for its own scholars. 
 
 ' ic) The School Board district shall include the 
 sums so to be claimed in the amount levied for or by 
 the general school rate, and shall present them to be 
 collected in the first school rate collection made after 
 receipt of the claim, and shall, within four months after 
 the making of the said rate, or at the latest when they 
 receive their own proportion of the rate, pay the sum 
 so claimed to the person recognised by the Education 
 Department as the principal manager of the school 
 to which the money is due.' 
 
 From the speeches of two Parliamentary leaders and 
 from Bills prepared by two very different educational 
 authorities, it will be seen that the reality of a crisis 
 in the management of elementary schools is looked 
 upon as imminent. That the strain upon ■ the 
 managers of voluntary schools is becoming in some 
 places almost intolerable is certain, and that there are 
 signs that in not a few places the pressure of the 
 
1 84 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 educational rate for the support of Board schools is 
 felt to be oppressive is not less certain. The effect of 
 the two Bills I have set out at length would aggravate 
 this last-named grievance, and therefore, if possible, 
 it ought to be avoided. Moreover, some of the 
 demands in the Roman Catholic Bill are excessive, as 
 if all were complied with no demands would be made 
 upon the benevolence of co-religionists to provide 
 education for their poorer brethren. The objections 
 to the first Bill are of a different kind : whilst 
 professing to safeguard the religious teaching in 
 Denominational schools, it places it to a considerable 
 extent at the mercy of the majority of a Committee 
 which might hold very opposite views on the subject 
 at different times. 
 
 As this book is passing through the press a Bill 
 has been prepared by the National Society on the 
 lines agreed to by the Committee appointed by the 
 Archbishops to consider the present position of the 
 Church and other voluntary schools, and to recommend 
 a plan by which they might be rescued from the 
 serious pecuniary difficulties in which many of them 
 now find themselves. This Bill has been approved 
 generally by the Bishops, and by a large representative 
 meeting at the National Society's rooms. I conclude 
 what I have to say on this subject by quoting in extenso 
 the important clauses of the Bill. 
 
 * 5. On and after the commencement of this Act all 
 existing grants made to public elementary schools by 
 the Education Department or Science and Art De- 
 partment, except as hereinafter mentioned, shall cease. 
 
 ' 6. On and after the commencement of this Act, 
 
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY'S BILL 185 
 
 the Education Department shall fix the number, tech- 
 nical qualifications, and salaries of all persons em- 
 ployed as teachers in Public Elementary Schools, and 
 it shall not be lawful for Voluntary Managers or School 
 Boards to alter any one of these particulars, either by 
 addition or diminution : 
 ' Provided always — 
 
 ' (i) Where any teacher has heretofore received 
 a higher salary, the said salary shall not be re- 
 duced so long as he holds the same office in 
 the same school. 
 
 * (ii) Where in any existing school an Organ- 
 ised Science Department is already attached to 
 any Public Elementary School, the managers 
 shall be at liberty, subject to the approval ol 
 the Education Department, and until other 
 provision be made for the conduct of these 
 Organised Science Departments, to pay such 
 further amount from their own resources as 
 they may deem fit as an increase of salary to 
 the principal teacher of such school, and to any 
 or all other teachers as may be employed 
 regularly to give instruction in whole or in part 
 to the pupils on the Register of the Organised 
 Science Department. 
 
 * (iii) The Managers of any school shall have 
 power to engage and pay or contribute to the 
 payment of an Organising Master or Inspector. 
 
 * 7. On and after the commencement of this Act all 
 salaries to teachers shall be paid as follows : — 
 
 * (i) The Education Department shall ten days 
 before the 25th of March, the 24th of June, th^ 
 
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 29th of September, and the 24th of December 
 pay to the School Treasurer's or Cashier's Account 
 at some approved local bank a sum equal to the 
 salaries for the quarter required for the payment 
 of teachers, less the sum of one shilling and 
 threepence per child on the average attendance of 
 the school year last ended. 
 
 '(ii) The school treasurer or cashier shall give 
 to every teacher on or before the above-men- 
 tioned quarter-days an order, on a form to be 
 supplied by the Education Department, for the 
 total amount of the salary due as fixed under 
 Section 6. The said form shall embody a form 
 of receipt to be signed by the teacher, and on 
 presentation shall be honoured by the local bank. 
 ' 8. The appointment, control and dismissal of 
 all teachers shall be, in the case of voluntary public 
 elementary schools, by the managers, and in the case 
 of School Board public elementary schools by the 
 School Board. 
 
 * 9. In the case of dismissal any teacher may, 
 within seven days, send an appeal to the Education 
 Department, sending at the same time a copy of 
 the said appeal to the voluntary managers or the 
 School Board. 
 
 ' In the case of a School Board public elementary 
 school the Education Department shall have the 
 absolute power to decide whether or not the dismissal 
 shall take effect, but in the case of a voluntary public 
 elementary school the dismissal, if based upon religious 
 grounds, shall not be cancelled unless, in addition to 
 
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY'S BILL 187 
 
 the decision of the Education Department, a decision 
 to the same effect is obtained as follows : — 
 
 * (i) In the case of Church of England public 
 elementary schools, from the Lord Bishop of the 
 diocese in which the school is situated. 
 
 * (ii) In the case of Roman Catholic public 
 elementary schools, from the Bishop under whose 
 supervision the school has been placed by the 
 managers. 
 
 ' (iii) In the case of Wesleyan public elemen- 
 tary schools, from the President of the Con- 
 ference. 
 
 * (iv) In the case of Jewish public elementary 
 schools, from the Chief Rabbi. 
 
 ' (v) In the case of other voluntary public ele- 
 mentary schools, whether denominational or un- 
 denominational, from some person whose name 
 shall have been accepted for such purpose in 
 the agreement between the teacher and his 
 employers. 
 
 * 10. The fee grant of ten shillings per child in 
 average attendance shall be paid to each school en- 
 titled to draw such grant. 
 
 * 11. All school accounts shall be annually audited 
 by a public auditor. 
 
 '12. It shall be lawful for all voluntary public ele- 
 mentary schools to raise for structural additions or 
 improvements ordered by the Education Department, 
 on the security of the school buildings, or other pro- 
 perty, a sum equal to not more than one-half the 
 value of those buildings or property, on a mortgage 
 
1 88 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 
 
 repayable, at a rate not exceeding four per cent, 
 interest, in not more than twenty years. 
 
 ' 13. In the case of increased accommodation being 
 required by the Education Department from any 
 voluntary public elementary school, the managers of 
 the said school shall have the same powers as those 
 conferred on School Boards by Section 20 of the 
 Education Act 1870. 
 
 * 14. On and after the commencement of this Act 
 all public elementary schools shall be exempt from 
 the payment of taxes and local rates. 
 
 * 15. On and after the commencement of this Act 
 recognition as a public elementary school shall not be 
 refused to any new school built at private cost where 
 the Department is satisfied that no satisfactory provi- 
 sion exists for the children for whom the school is 
 intended, regard being had to the religious belief of 
 the parents. 
 
 ' 16. It shall be lawful for a School Board or County 
 Council or any local educational authority or any 
 body of voluntary managers to open and carry on 
 any evening or continuation school and to pay the 
 salaries of teachers in such school, and to create 
 central classes and pay for teachers to instruct 
 pupil teachers and uncertified assistant teachers ; 
 but all such central classes shall be open on the 
 same terms to all pupil and' assistant teachers in the 
 district of the said School Board. 
 
 ' 17. Where the managers of two or more public 
 elementary schools in the same or neighbouring 
 school districts agree to associate and elect a com- 
 mittee for the schools in accordance with a scheme to 
 
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY'S BILL 189 
 
 be approved by the Education Department, the schools 
 may be treated as one school for such of the purposes 
 of the Elementary Education Acts, 1878-1 895, as may 
 be mentioned in the scheme, and the said committee 
 may for such purposes be treated as the managers 
 of the associated schools, provided that no Board 
 school shall under this section be associated with 
 any public elementary school other than a Board 
 school.' 
 
INDEX 
 
 Accommodation, 102, 116, 121, 
 
 134, 143 
 Acts, Lord Sandon's (1876), 137, 
 
 (Education Act, 1870), 123 
 Affiliated Societies, 22 
 Allen, Archdeacon, 56 
 Apprenticed pauper children, 14 
 Archbishops' Committee, 163 
 Arithmetic, 145 
 Attendance, percentage of, 112, 141 
 
 Balfour, Mr., 167 
 Battersea Normal School and Col- 
 lege, 37, 41 
 Bell, Dr., 16 
 Bill, Mr. Whitbread's (1807), 19 
 
 — Lord Brougham's (1839), 49 
 
 — Sir J. Graham's (1843), 55 
 
 — Manchester and Salford Boroughs' 
 Education (1851), 105 
 
 — Education of Poor (1867), 105 
 Birmingham Education League, 
 
 125 
 
 Birmingham schools, report on, 108 
 British and Foreign School Society, 
 
 Brougham, Lord, Committee of 
 
 inquiry, 28 
 Burges, Rev. R. B., 131 
 
 Catechism, exclusion of, 129 
 Census returns, 24 
 Central School, Baldwin's Gardens, 
 22 
 
 120 
 
 h 137, 139, 154 
 Royal (1818), 29 
 
 80, 141 
 
 See Educa- 
 
 Certificated teachers, 62 
 Charity schools (S.P.C.K.), 11 
 Church Building Act, 99 
 Circular of London School Board, 
 
 152 
 Class subjects, 137 
 Clergy, efforts of, 14, 
 — zeal, 28 
 Codes, 87, 8( 
 Commission, 
 
 (1858), 
 
 (1886), 
 
 Committee of Council. 
 
 tion Department 
 Compromise, failure of. 
 Compulsory attendance, 
 Conscience clause, 29, 
 
 155 
 Control of Education Department, 
 
 157 
 Corry, Mr., mitigation of Revised 
 
 Code, 103 
 Cost of education of poor, yy, 113, 
 
 136, 141 
 Cost of training teachers, 39 
 County and borough boards, 84 
 Cowper-Temple clause, 128, 129, 
 
 171 
 Cram, 149 
 
 Disturbances (of 1839 and 1842), 
 
 54 
 Durham, Bishop of, 15 
 
 f39 
 70, 
 
 28, 
 
INDEX 
 
 IQf 
 
 East end of London {1870), 121 
 Edinburgh Sessional School, 31 
 Education Department, 43, 45, 47, 
 
 52, 89, 168 
 attitude to Church, 71, 72, 
 
 73 
 
 distrust of, 49, 64 
 
 requirements of, 74 
 
 treatment of managers, 93 
 
 Educational Legislative Schemes, 
 
 174 
 Endowments of elementary schools, 
 
 15, 88, 105, 142 
 Estimate of School Board rate, 127 
 Evening instruction, 12 
 Expenditure of School Boards, 135 
 
 Faint-hearted Churchmen, 134 
 Fearon, Mr., 108 
 Fees, 139. See Free education 
 Financial pressure on Church schools, 
 
 136, 140, 161, 163 
 Fitch, Mr. (Report, 1870), 108 
 Forster, Mr., 123 
 Free education, 10, 158, 161 
 
 General religious instruction, 44 
 Gladstone, Mr. (promise by), 126 
 Gouge's schools, 10 
 Grants by Government — 
 
 Building, 29, 43, 133 
 
 Capitation, 69, 86, ^'j 
 
 Maintenance, 60 
 
 Half-timers, 88, 140 
 
 Idleness in private schools, 119 
 Imperfect education, 144 
 Improvements, compulsory, 161 
 Individual results, 90, 138 
 Inspection, Government, 41, 43, 63, 
 69, 130 
 
 — S.P.C.K., 12 
 
 — diocesan, 131 
 
 Jealousy of Church, 27, 47, 68, 
 73, 75, 102, 123, 163, 166 
 
 Jewish schools, 114, 172 
 
 Kay-Shuttleworth, Sir J., 35, 
 
 42, 46, 60, 85 
 Kneller Hall, 47 
 
 Lancaster, Mr., 16 
 Limit of 1 7 J. 6d.^ 137 
 Loss of knowledge, 148 
 Lowe, Mr., 89, loi 
 
 Management clauses, 63, 72 
 Managers, 33, 93 
 Manchester, Bishop of, 133 
 Manufacturing population, 95 
 Masters, duties of, 34 
 Migratory population, 98 
 Mining population, 97 
 Minutes of 1839, 43 
 
 1846, 61 
 
 i860, 89 
 
 Monitors, 16, 23, 62 
 
 National Society, 17, 21, 23, 25, 
 
 53> 58, 131, 133 
 National Society's Bill, The, 184 
 New schools, 143 
 Nonconformist schools, 114, 118 
 Normal schools, 37, 44 
 Norwood pauper school, 35 
 
 Organising Masters, 37 
 Overpressure, 148 
 
 Parents, rights of, 72, 81, 169 
 Payment by results, 90, 93, 97, 
 
 146, 149 
 Payment of teachers by Government, 
 
 Pensions, 62, 87, loi 
 Political motives, 27, 47, 123 
 Pricing the subjects, 93, 147 
 Private schools, 116 
 Pupil teachers, 24, 61, 62, 86 
 
 Queen's letters, 53 
 Queen's scholars, 104, 156 
 
 Raikes, Mr., 15 
 
19^ 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Rates, aid from, 19, 49, 55, 82, 
 
 142, 166, 173 
 Reading, 144 
 Religious Education Society of 
 
 Birmingham, 131 
 Religious educationists, 20 
 Religious instruction, 45, 131, 132, 
 
 174 
 
 in Edinburgh, 31 
 
 in Board schools, 151, 153 
 
 Religious liberty, 17, 48, 165 
 Religious qualifications of teachers, 
 
 152 
 Revised Code (1861), 87, 100 
 Roman Catholic Scheme for Legis- 
 lation, 180 
 Roman Catholic schools, ill, 143 
 
 St. Mark's College, 30 
 Salaries of teachers, 62, 77, 81, 
 
 154 
 Salisbury, Marquis of, 129, 158 
 Sandon, Lord, 137, 139 
 School Boards, 127, 167 
 School buildings, 21, 162 
 Secondary education, 138 
 Secretaries of diocesan societies, 23 
 Secular education, 27, 48, 125, 128, 
 
 159, 164 
 Society for Encouragement of Arts, 
 
 121 
 Special fund of 1843, 57 
 Special religious instruction, 44 
 Specific subjects, 104, 138 
 Spelling, 144 
 
 Standards, 88 
 
 Standard subjects, 137 
 
 Street arabs, 96 
 
 Summary of treatment of religious 
 
 education, 164 
 Sunday schools, 133 
 Sunday School Union, 15 
 Supplementing not supplanting, 
 
 125, 135, 136 
 Syllabus of religious instruction, 
 150 
 
 Training colleges for teachers, 12, 
 22, 23, 30, 36, 37, 58, 154 
 
 — colleges. Day, 155 
 
 Transfer to School Board, 125, 136 
 Tufnell, Mr., 30, 40 
 
 Undenominational religion, 44, 
 
 io3» 159 
 Union with National Society, 50 
 
 Voluntary system, 113, 142, 162, 
 167, 169 
 
 Wales, early efforts, 10 
 
 — circulating schools, 13 
 
 — ill-treatment of Church schools,74 
 Ward schools, 13 
 
 Wesleyan schools, 66, 114 
 Whitbread, Mr., 18 
 Wilson, Rev. A., 35 
 Wood, Mr., 31 
 Workhouse schools, 68 
 Writing, 145 
 
 PRrNTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AKD CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 LONDON 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 The National Society's Draft Bill met with a general 
 acceptance, and was approved on May 3, 1895, at a 
 largely attended Conference of the Standing Committee 
 of the National Society, with elected representatives from 
 the various dioceses; and also in the same month by 
 the Upper House of Convocation. In June it was 
 approved by the Annual Congress of Church School 
 Managers and Teachers. 
 
 Objections to this Bill came from those who (not- 
 withstanding the fact that the Bill guarded all existing 
 interests) feared that the huge salaries given to some 
 School Board teachers would not under the Bill continue, 
 and that what was saved on them would go to increase 
 the slender wage of the village teacher, who was more 
 loyal to the Church than to any professional organisa- 
 tion. But other difficulties of a formidable character 
 were suggested. It was said : — 
 
 (1) That the proposed system involved either that all 
 teachers should have similar salaries ; or, that the salaries 
 should depend upon the circumstances of the school. 
 
 (2) That whatever choice were made in dealing with 
 this first question there would be many cases where it 
 
 N 
 
194 APPENDIX 
 
 must be said to a School Board, You must have a cheaper 
 kind of teacher than hitherto in order to conform to the 
 standard of teachers at the class of schools to which we 
 have determined your schools are to belong ; and the 
 freedom you have hitherto enjoyed to decide the parti- 
 cular standard of teacher you prefer is henceforth to be 
 taken away from you, and you are not to be at liberty 
 to spend money on the improvement of education by 
 raising it. 
 
 In consequence of these objections a special Conference 
 was summoned by the Archbishops, at which his Grace 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury himself presided; this, for 
 purposes of identification, we may describe as 
 
 The Archbishops' Conference. 
 
 This Conference gave special and prolonged attention to 
 all the circumstances of the situation, and on Wednesday, 
 November 20, presented the following memorial to her 
 Majesty's Government : — 
 
 We do not think it necessary to urge in any detail either 
 the claims or the needs of Voluntary Schools to receive increased 
 public support. Their claims and needs are well known to the 
 Government and to the country, and are generally admitted. 
 
 Nor do we think it necessary to dwell on our anxious care for 
 the character of elementary education throughout the country. 
 The Church has in the past made very great e£forts for its 
 continuous improvement, and is prepared to do so in the future. 
 It is not our wdsh to ask the Government to relieve Churchmen 
 of the sacrifices which they have always made and are still 
 making. 
 
 But we think that it may be of some assistance to Her 
 Majesty's Government, at the time when they are considering 
 the subject, if we lay before them a brief statement of principles 
 
APPENDIX 195 
 
 which, in our opinion as Churchmen, should govern all educa- 
 tional legislation, and of certain aims which should especially 
 be kept in view in any new Act affecting elementary education ; 
 together with an outline of the measures which we think most 
 likely to secure the attainment of these aims. 
 
 I. — Principles to be kept in Vieiu in all Legislation affecting 
 Public Elementary Schools. 
 
 1. The maintenance of the religious character which has 
 been impressed on the whole of English education by its origin 
 and history. 
 
 2. The preservation, as the chief security for the permanence 
 of this definitely religious character, of the existing connection 
 of schools and training colleges with the religious bodies that 
 founded and support them. 
 
 3. The right of parents to determine the character of the 
 religious instruction provided for their children. 
 
 4. The safeguarding of this right as regards the reUgious 
 teaching both of the children of Church parents in Board 
 Schools and of the children of Nonconformist parents in Church 
 Schools. 
 
 5. The justice of the claim of denominational schools that 
 no school or training college shall be disquaUfied for receiving 
 grants of public moneys for secular education by reason of the 
 religious opinions professed by the teachers or taught in that 
 school or college. 
 
 6. The high educational value of variety, both in type and in 
 management, of schools, as the best security for progress in 
 education, the efficiency of all schools receiving grants from 
 public money being guaranteed by public inspection, examina- 
 tion, reports, and audit. 
 
 II. — An Outline of Measures which we recommend, 
 
 1. The abolition of the 17s. Qd. limit, and of the other 
 limitation on the grant in Art. 107, as entailing undeserved 
 hardships on schools least able to bear them. 
 
196 APPENDIX 
 
 2. The exemption from rates of all elementary school 
 buildings. 
 
 3. An increase of contributions from public sources sufficient 
 to meet the general increased cost of education throughout the 
 country, to be administered in such a manner as will prevent 
 what is harmful in the competition between Voluntary and 
 Board Schools. 
 
 While on the whole we think it better that the required con- 
 tributions should come from the Imperial Exchequer rather 
 than from the local rates, we recognise the difficulties which 
 surround the question, and we desire to express our readiness, 
 speaking generally, to support other definite proposals which 
 may be formulated by her Majesty's Government and which 
 would give the necessary relief. 
 
 4. The rearrangement of all Government grants, so that 
 poorer schools may share equitably with richer schools in those 
 grants. 
 
 5. The revision of School Board precepts by some superior 
 public authority. 
 
 6. Increased facilities for federation of Voluntary Schools. 
 
 7. That classes, scholarships, and other educational advan- 
 tages provided by School Boards at the cost of the public shall 
 be open to the teachers or scholars of Board and Voluntary 
 Schools on the same terms. 
 
 8. Provision that all reasonable facilities shall be afforded 
 for the separate religious instruction of children in Board or 
 Voluntary Schools whose parents may desire it, in the spirit 
 of the Industrial Schools Act of 1866. 
 
 9. Liberty to provide in any district " annual grants " schools 
 where the Department is satisfied that no satisfactory provision 
 exists for the children for whom the school is intended, regard 
 being had to the religious belief of the parents. 
 
 10. The embodiment of the proposed changes in an Act of 
 Parliament. 
 
 Edw. Cantuar. 
 October 30, 1895. Willelm. Ebor. 
 
APPENDIX 197 
 
 The Government Bill of 1896. 
 
 This was the result of Lord Cross's Committee and 
 the Archbishops' Conference. It provided that — 
 
 for the assistance of Public Elementary Schools requiring special 
 aid there should be paid in every financial year, out of moneys 
 provided by Parliament, to the education authority for each 
 county a special aid grant, calculated at the rate of 4s. for each 
 scholar who, during the preceding financial year, was either in a 
 Voluntary School in the county or in a school of any School 
 Board in the county which, but for this Act, would be entitled 
 to a special Parliamentary grant under section 97 of the Elemen- 
 tary Education Act, 1870. 
 
 This special grant to be reduced " by the amount applied 
 for the maintenance of the school during the said previous 
 financial year from any endowment held in trust for the 
 benefit of the school." 
 
 It abolished the 17s. 6fZ. limit. 
 
 It provided that every County Council should appoint 
 an Education Committee for the purposes of the Act ; 
 and the expression " county " was defined to include " a 
 county borough." 
 
 The duty of this education authority was ** to supplement and 
 not to supplant such existing organisations for educational 
 purposes as for the time being supplied efficient instruction." 
 Where there is no School Board this education authority was 
 to act as the school attendance committee ; it also took over the 
 powers of a County Council in relation to Industrial Schools 
 and Eeformatories, except as to raising money ; and it might, 
 with the approval of the Education Department and the Local 
 Government Board, make a contract in relation to the care and 
 maintenance of all or any of the children chargeable to that union ; 
 and, when such contract had been made, it, in conjunction with 
 the Education Department, exercised such powers and duties in 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 relation to such children as were specified in the contract. Further, 
 this education authority might undertake, on such terms as might 
 be agreed on between it and the Education Department, the 
 administration on behalf of the Education Department of all 
 or any of the duties of that Department in respect of all or any 
 part of the money provided by Parliament for public education, 
 or by the Department of Science and Art, so far as it is applied 
 in aid of schools in that county, and in respect of securing or 
 certifying the efficiency of schools in the county, upon condition 
 that in any financial year the sum received for the ordinary 
 Parliamentary grant and the fee grant during the year ending 
 July 31, 1896, should not be exceeded, or, if these two sums 
 amounted to less than 29s., then that sum should not be 
 exceeded. 
 
 There was a clause (No. 26) intended to limit the rate 
 that could be levied by a School Board. It directed that 
 the sum required from the rates for the education of each 
 child should not exceed that levied on the year preceding 
 the passing of the Bill or 20s. per child, excei[)t consent was 
 obtained from certain authorities named in the Bill. The 
 clause did not seem very effective, but to some extent it 
 might have proved a curb upon extravagance. 
 
 Perhaps the most important clause of the Bill was 
 clause 27, which provided that, " if the parents of a reason- 
 able number of the scholars attending the school required 
 it," the managers should, " so far as practicable, permit 
 reasonable arrangements to be made for allowing such 
 religious instruction." This clause was applicable to Board 
 and Voluntary Schools alike. 
 
 During the passage of the Bill through Parliament it 
 was severely criticised by friend as well as foe. A resolu- 
 tion of the Northern Convocation in favour of strengthen- 
 ing it by a provision of rate-aid was carried unanimously 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 199 
 
 in the Upper and by a large majority in the Lower House 
 This proposal was strongly deprecated by others both in 
 the North and the South. There was also considerable 
 difference of opinion on the matter of clause 27. Other 
 points of a local rather than educational character helped 
 to make the passing of the Bill impossible, and it was with- 
 drawn at the end of June, 1896. 
 
 The Bishop of London's Conference, Oct. 30, 1896. 
 
 With a view of securing more united action from 
 Churchmen in all parts of the country a Conference was 
 organised under the presidency of the Bishop of London, 
 consisting of the Standing Committee of the National 
 Society, together with delegates representing the Convoca- 
 tions and Houses of Laymen of the Southern and Northern 
 Provinces, and all Diocesan Conferences and Boards of 
 Education throughout the country. At this Conference it 
 was resolved as follows : — 
 
 1. To ask the Govermnent for aid from the Imperial Ex- 
 chequer at a rate not less than ^s. a child to all Public 
 Elementary Schools alike. 
 
 2. That the said grant in the case of Voluntary Schools 
 be paid to federations of schools only. 
 
 3. To ask for aid from the rates — 
 
 (a) In School Board districts only ; 
 
 (6) This rate in aid to be expended within the 
 
 School Board district from which it should be 
 
 raised ; 
 (c) To be payable to federations of schools only. 
 
 4. Federations to be either denominational or un- 
 denominational. 
 
 The area of no federation, except in the case of London, 
 to be smaller than the school district in which any of the 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 schools are situate, nor any federation to consist of fewer 
 than three schools. 
 
 Subject to appeal to the Education Department, no 
 denominational federation to be allowed to refuse admission 
 to any contiguous school belonging to the same denomi- 
 nation. 
 
 The administration of the special grant in aid, the rate 
 in aid, and (if provided in the rules of the federation) the 
 fee grant to be vested in the council of the federation. 
 
 The rules and constitution of each federation to be 
 approved by the Education Department. 
 
 The council to give no advantage to, nor to impose any 
 disadvantage upon, any school because the managers thereof 
 have appointed or dismissed, or refused to appoint, any 
 particular teacher, nor because they have provided or refused 
 to provide any particular form of religious instruction. 
 
 5. That in any scheme for granting aid from the rates, 
 while it is essential that the appointment of the teachers and 
 the control of the religious teaching in denominational 
 schools shall remain under the control of the denomination, 
 it is reasonable that the rating authority shall be satisfied 
 that the secular part of the teaching is efficient, and the 
 money economically spent. 
 
 6. The following shall form part of any scheme for rate- 
 aid : If any School Board raises the maintenance rate per 
 child in average attendance above that which was expended 
 in 1895-1896, the additional rate shall be called an excess 
 rate, and shall be divided among all the schools, whether 
 Board or Voluntary, in the district in proportion to the 
 number of children in attendance. 
 
 7. In any School Board district any religious denomina- 
 tion shall have the right to open any new school upon the 
 same conditions as if it were a non- School Board district. 
 
 8. In any School Board district the managers of any 
 school transferred to a School Board, or any new managers 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 of the same denomination, shall have the right to claim 
 the re-transference of the school to them, and to reopen it 
 as a Voluntary School. 
 
 9. The limitations of grant (Code, Art. 107 ; Elementary 
 Education Act, 1876, s. 19 ; and Elementary Education 
 Act, 1891, s. 3) to be repealed. 
 
 10. The local rates on school buildings to be abolished 
 or paid by the rating authority. 
 
 Conference of Members of Convocation and the 
 Houses of Laymen. 
 
 This Conference took place on November 5th and 6th, 
 1896, under the presidency of the Archbishop of York, 
 the See of Canterbury being vacant. With the following 
 alterations the Resolutions of the National Society were 
 adopted : — 
 
 (a) To Resolution 1 the word "statutory" was inserted 
 
 before " aid." 
 (/3) To Resolution 2 the words "on their written demand " 
 
 were added, 
 (y) To Resolution 3 a fourth subsection was added to read 
 as follows : 
 
 {d) " Not to exceed the total amount of voluntary 
 contributions including endowments." 
 (?) To Resolution 6, at the commencement were added the 
 words "In addition to the rate-aid hereinbefore 
 mentioned." 
 (e) To Resolution 8 were added the words : — 
 
 " Subject to such conditions as the Education Depart- 
 ment may approve." 
 
 It will be observed that, with the exception of the 
 addition to Resolution 3, the amendments were either 
 
202 APPENDIX 
 
 verbal or explanatory. The whole scheme, as embodied in 
 the Eesolutions, was formally approved nemine contradi- 
 cente, and the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of 
 London (Archbishop-designate of Canterbury) were re- 
 quested to place before her Majesty's Government the 
 conclusions arrived at by the Conference in such form 
 as they might think desirable. 
 
 The Government Bill of 1897 was the result of the 
 foregoing Conferences. 
 
 The Education Act of 1897. 
 
 The result of three years' work under this Act is now 
 before the country, and the following summary is of con- 
 siderable interest as showing statistics of the Associations 
 and their work under their respective denominations : — 
 
 Denomination of Number of 
 Association Associations 
 
 Number of 
 Schools 
 
 Average 
 Attendance 
 
 Grant 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 Church of England . 46 
 
 11,851 
 
 1,900,705 
 
 464,853 10 
 
 1 
 
 Koman Catholic . 11 
 
 1,030 
 
 248,100 
 
 70,673 9 
 
 5 
 
 British ... 11 
 
 827 
 
 176,377 
 
 46,425 12 
 
 
 
 Wesleyan ... 6 
 
 471 
 
 129,102 
 
 36,146 16 
 
 3 
 
 Jewish ... 1 
 
 11 
 
 9,971 
 
 2,908 17 
 
 2 
 
 Unassociated Schools — 
 
 218 
 
 22,026 
 
 508 
 
 
 
 75 14,408 2,486,281 621,516 4 11 
 
 It will thus be seen that, ranged in the order under 
 which they have benefited by the Act, the Denominational 
 Schools raak as follows : — 
 
 Jewish Schools receive 5«. 10^. per oh 
 
 Roman Catholic Schools „ 55. 8-3<i. 
 
 Wesleyan Schools „ 55. l'2d. 
 
 British Schools „ 5«. '6'\d. 
 
 Church of England Schools „ 4s. 10*6^. 
 
 Id in average attendance. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 203 
 
 The following table will also be of interest, showing the 
 order in which the Church Schools in the various dioceses 
 have benefited : — 
 
 
 Aid grant allowed 
 
 
 
 Aid grant allowed 
 
 
 bj Government 
 
 
 
 by Government 
 
 
 per child in 
 
 
 
 per child in 
 
 average attendance 
 
 
 average attendance 
 
 Rank Diocese 
 
 «. d. 
 
 Rank 
 
 Diocese 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1. London . 
 
 . 5 8-9 
 
 18. 
 
 Durham . 
 
 . 4 71 
 
 2. Liverpool . 
 
 . 5 7-9 
 
 19. 
 
 Carlisle . 
 
 . 4 6-8 
 
 3. Wakefield. 
 
 . 5 7-8 
 
 20. 
 
 Winchester 
 
 . 4 6-6 
 
 4, Manchester 
 
 . 5 7-5 
 
 21. 
 
 Bangor . 
 
 . 4 6-5 
 
 5. Rochester . 
 
 . 5 6-6 
 
 22. 
 
 S. Albans 
 
 . 4 5-8 
 
 6, Chester . 
 
 . 5 11 
 
 23. 
 
 Lincoln . 
 
 . 4 5-7 
 
 7. Ripon 
 
 . 5 0-9 
 
 24. 
 
 Peterborough 
 
 . 4 51 
 
 8. Bristol 
 
 . 4 11-8 
 
 25. 
 
 Ely. 
 
 . 4 41 
 
 9. LlandaflE . 
 
 . 4 11-4 
 
 26. 
 
 Truro 
 
 . 4 31 
 
 10. Worcester . 
 
 . 4 11-2 
 
 27. 
 
 Salisbury. 
 
 . 4 2-8 
 
 11. Lichfield . 
 
 . 4 HI 
 
 28. 
 
 S. Davids. 
 
 . 4 2-8 
 
 12. York 
 
 . 4 110 
 
 29. 
 
 Gloucester 
 
 . 4 2-2 
 
 13. Canterbury 
 
 . 4 9-5 
 
 30. 
 
 Bath and Well 
 
 s .4 21 
 
 14. Exeter 
 
 . 4 89 
 
 31. 
 
 Oxford . 
 
 . 4 1-8 
 
 1.5. Southwell. 
 
 . 4 8-8 
 
 32. 
 
 Norwich . 
 
 . 4 1-4 
 
 16. Newcastle . 
 
 . 4 8-7 
 
 33. 
 
 S. Asaph . 
 
 . 4 0-9 
 
 17. Chichester. 
 
 . 4 7-7 
 
 34. 
 
 Hereford 
 
 . 4 0-6 
 
 In England 194 Schools and in Wales 7 seem to have 
 abstained from joining any Association. 
 
 Numerous schemes for the further settlement of the 
 Educational system have recently been laid before the 
 public. 
 
 The Leeds Scheme 
 
 proposes : — 
 
 1. Free and full opportunity for opening new schools, and 
 thus developing the Voluntary Schools equally with those of the 
 Boards in growing districts. At present this opportunity is 
 practically denied to us, because the Department will not sanction 
 the opening of any new school in a Board district without the 
 consent of the School Board, and in considering whether a new 
 school is required it takes no account whatever of the rehgious 
 question. 
 
204 APPENDIX 
 
 2. Some system of financial aid which shall not remain 
 stationary as the cost of education increases, but shall provide 
 a way by which fresh funds from public sources may be forth- 
 coming to meet fresh demands on the part of the Department. 
 
 8. The removal of the injustice from which the Church 
 suffers in consequence of the Cowper Temple clause ; an in- 
 justice, it must be remembered, which is peculiar to England, 
 for in Scotland (as has been already shown), where the schools 
 are mainly supported from the rates, the Shorter Catechism of 
 Presbyterianism is freely taught, and even in some cases where 
 Romanists predominate Roman Catholic instruction is officially 
 given ; while in Ireland, where the schools are maintained 
 from Imperial funds, Roman Catholic Catechisms and Formu- 
 laries are employed without let or hindrance of any kind. 
 
 The Manchester Scheme 
 
 provides for : — 
 
 1. Power, ''notwithstanding all trusts and agreements to 
 the contrary," to transfer Voluntary Schools to local authority 
 provided they continue to be managed by a local committee 
 "on which the religious denomination" of the transferred 
 school be adequately represented. 
 
 2. All income to go to local authority, who shall efficiently 
 maintain the school, defraying an increased portion of the cost 
 from Imperial sources. 
 
 3. Capital expenditure on school buildings to be provided 
 by the denomination to which the transferred school belongs. 
 
 4. Trustees to have power to raise money for improvement, 
 &c., of buildings, repayable " in twenty or thirty years." 
 
 5. Teachers to be appointed or dismissed by " local com- 
 mittee of managers " (as to constitution of this committee see 
 Recommendation 1), subject to confirmation by local authority. 
 "Head-teachers and all teachers giving religious instruction " to 
 be of same denomination as transferred school. 
 
APPENDIX 205 
 
 6. In Church of England School transferred to local 
 authority, the religious instruction to be *' superintended by 
 the clergyman of the parish." 
 
 The Bipming-ham Scheme 
 
 suggests : — 
 
 1. Formation of ten local authorities for the whole country 
 as follows : 
 
 (a) Metropolitan area. 
 
 (&) Southern counties. 
 
 (c) Western counties. 
 
 {d) Midland counties west. 
 
 (e) Midland counties east. 
 
 (/) Eastern counties. 
 
 {g) Lancashire. 
 
 {K) Yorkshire. 
 
 {%) Northern counties. 
 
 (/) Wales. 
 
 2. Such local authorities to have power — 
 
 {pi) To register and classify existing schools. 
 
 (6) To provide schools, and transfer schools and endow- 
 ments from one locality to another, subject to 
 regard to private interests and Parliamentary 
 approval. 
 
 (c) To make orders respecting scholarships. 
 
 (c?) To remedy sanitary defects. 
 
 (e) To inspect all schools. 
 
 (/) To " make orders for the better management of 
 schools." 
 
 {g) To administer Imperial grants as directed by 
 Education Department. 
 
 {h) To recommend Education Department as to erection 
 and maintenance of Training Colleges. 
 
 (t) To approve and modify the curriculum of any school 
 receiving aid from rates and taxes. 
 
2o6 APPENDIX 
 
 The Bishop of Islingrton's Committee, 
 
 which was appeinted by the Bishop of London, met early 
 in 1900, had the advantage of considering all the foregoing 
 schemes, and having met agreed upon the following scheme 
 as the best practical solution of existing difficulties : — 
 
 1. The same facilities shall be afforded by Statute for the 
 opening of new Public Elementary Denominational Schools 
 in School Board Districts as now exist in non- School 
 Board Districts, and, in sanctioning new schools, the Board 
 of Education shall have such regard to the religious belief 
 of the people of the district, as is provided in the Scotch 
 Education Act of 1872. 
 
 2. In the interest of perfect religious liberty in all Public 
 Elementary Schools, whether Board or Voluntary, oppor- 
 tunity for separate denominational religious instruction of 
 children, when desired by a reasonable number of parents, 
 shall be secured by Statute. 
 
 3. In all future arrangements between Managers of 
 Voluntary Schools and School Boards it shall be made a 
 condition that the religious teaching in such Voluntary 
 Schools shall, subject to the provisions of the preceding 
 clause, be in each such school as determined by the trust 
 deed; and no school shall be handed over without the 
 consent of the trustees, nor shall the entire interest in 
 the school be handed over, but only the use of it granted 
 under conditions. 
 
 4. Local Educational Authorities shall be established. 
 
 5. It is desirable that the Local Educational Authority 
 
 shall — 
 . {a) Be representative of all Public Educational in- 
 terests within its area : 
 (6) be empowered to make payments from public 
 funds at its disposal to any Association consti- 
 
APPENDIX 207 
 
 tuted uDder the Voluntary Schools Act of 1897, 
 provided — 
 
 i. That no portion of such payment be applied to 
 any Voluntary School which refuses to give 
 facilities for the separate denominational reli- 
 gious instruction of children whose parents 
 desire it : 
 
 ii. That representatives of the Local Educational 
 Authority are admitted to the Governing Body of 
 the Association: 
 
 (c) Be empowered to issue precepts each year upon 
 the several rating authorities within its area 
 for such amounts as may be sufficient to provide 
 for the educational requirements of its area. 
 
 The National Society's Conference in 1900. 
 
 At a Conference between the Standing Committee of 
 the National Society and delegates elected by diocesan 
 boards of education, conferences, and school associations, 
 held on Thursday, May 3, at the National Society's House, 
 Westminster, under the presidency of his Grace the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, the following Resolutions were 
 adopted : — 
 
 1. " That while approving the principle of the block 
 grants as proposed in the New Code, this meeting is of 
 opinion that the financial arrangements need reconsidera- 
 tion and amendment so as to avoid causing pecuniary loss 
 to the better Voluntary Schools." 
 
 2. " That the grants for infants' schools should be 
 increased." 
 
 3. *' That this meeting is of opinion that the alteration 
 in the pupil-teacher grants will adversely affect — (a) the 
 supply of pupil teachers ; (6) the system of central classes ; 
 and (c) the general usefulness of pupil-teachers in the 
 schools." 
 
zo8 APPENDIX 
 
 4. *' Opportunity should be given for opening new 
 elementary denominational scliools, and in the case of all 
 new schools, whether Board or Voluntary, the Department 
 should have regard to the religious belief of the children, 
 as provided in the Scotch Education Act of 1872, section 67." 
 
 5. " Trustees of schools should have power to raise 
 money, repayable in twenty or thirty years, for the construc- 
 tion, enlargement, and improvement of buildings." 
 
 6. "In schools which may in future be transferred to a 
 School Board the religious teaching shall be as determined 
 by the trust deed, and no school shall be transferred without 
 the consent of the trustees, nor shall the entire interest 
 in the school be transferred, but only the use of it granted 
 under suitable conditions." 
 
 7. "In the interest of perfect religious liberty in all 
 public elementary schools, whether Voluntary or Board, 
 separate denominational religious instruction of children 
 should be secured by statute when desired by a reasonable 
 number of parents." 
 
 At a Joint Conference of the Elementary Education 
 Committees of the Lower Houses of the Convocations of 
 Canterbury and York, with the Standing Committee of the 
 National Society, July 5, 1900, Sir Francis S. Powell, 
 Bart., M.P., in the Chair, the following Eesolutions were 
 agreed to : — 
 
 1. That the constitution and functions of the Local 
 Educational Authorities are a matter of most pressing 
 importance at the present time. 
 
 2. That it is desirable that such Local Educational 
 Authorities under the Board of Education should deal with 
 both Primary and Secondary Education within their several 
 areas, provided that liberty with regard to religious teaching 
 is given to all schools. 
 
APPENDIX zoc^ 
 
 3. That funds entrusted to the Local Educational 
 Authorities should be applicable to Primary as well as 
 Secondary Education. 
 
 4. That the Local Educational Authorities, while satis- 
 fying themselves as to the disposal of money granted by 
 them, should not establish schools of their own, nor under- 
 take the management of schools. 
 
 5. That in the distribution of funds in aid of schools by 
 these authorities, all efficient schools should be dealt with 
 on equal terms. 
 
 6. That in the constitution of the Local Educational 
 Authorities all Educational Authorities within the area 
 should be represented. 
 
 7. That the areas should be as large as consistent with 
 effective working. 
 
 8. The Chairman was requested to communicate the 
 Resolutions passed to the Presidents of the Convocations 
 of Canterbury and York. 
 
 Inasmuch as in the foregoing Resolutions frequent 
 reference has been made to the Scotch and Irish systems, 
 your Committee think that the following explanation may 
 be useful : — 
 
 The Scotch System. 
 
 The Scotch Education Act of 1872, which regulates Public 
 Elementary Schools in Scotland, has no Cowper-Temple Clause, 
 but provides under clause 67, 2 (6), in the establishment of 
 schools after the passing of the Act " due regard " shall be had 
 *' to the religious belief" of the children's parents. The result 
 under this clause is that Scotchmen enjoy a considerably greater 
 liberty than their Enghsh brethren. The " Shorter Catechism" 
 is often taught in Board Schools. 
 
 
 
2IO APPENDIX 
 
 The Irish System. 
 
 The rules and regulations for Public Elementary Schools in 
 Ireland are even more explicit and satisfactory. Such schools 
 are called " National " Schools. Eule 75 provides that " Oppor- 
 tunities are to be provided to the children of all National Schools 
 for receiving such religious instruction as their parents and 
 guardians approve of." 
 
 The National Schools are divided into two classes : — 
 
 {a) Vested schools which belong either to Education Com- 
 missioners or trustees for the purpose of being maintained as 
 National Schools. 
 
 (6) Non-vested schools, the property of private individuals. 
 
 Both these classes of schools are under the control of 
 local managers. 
 
 Under Rule 83, in vested schools, ''pastors or other per- 
 sons approved by parents have access to them in the school- 
 room for the purpose of giving them rehgious instruction 
 there." 
 
 Under Rule 84, in non-vested schools, it is for "the 
 patrons or local managers to determme whether any, and, if 
 any, what religious instruction shall be given in the school- 
 room ; but if they do not permit it to be given in the school- 
 room, the children whose parents or guardians so desire must 
 be allowed to absent themselves Irom school at reasonable 
 times for the purpose of receiving such instruction elsewhere." 
 
 Rule 86 provides that " the reading of the Scriptures either 
 in the Protestant Authorised or in the Douay Version, the 
 teaching of catechisms, public prayer, and all other religious 
 exercises, come within the rules of religious instruction." 
 
 There is, of course, a conscience, or rather several con- 
 science clauses, which amply provide for children being 
 exempted. Your Committee thiuk that there can be no doubt 
 
APPENDIX 211 
 
 that all denominations have in Ireland the fullest freedom. 
 The manager of an Irish "■ National " School wrote a few 
 years ago as follows : — 
 
 " We can give as much reUgious instruction as we please, 
 and are not hampered in any way. Our school here is essen- 
 tially a Church School, just as much as the school under the 
 patronage of the parish priest is a Roman Cathohc School. 
 Only parents can withdraw their children from our teaching, 
 if they please, in the hour of religious instruction. I wish 
 Church people in England had as good an educational system 
 as the Irish National Board." 
 
 The National Society's Resolutions of 1901. 
 
 The following general principles were adopted by the 
 National Society in 1901 : — 
 
 1. In all Voluntary Schools the cost of the distinctive 
 religious teaching should be paid by the denomination to 
 which the school belongs, and the cost of all other teaching 
 by the State. 
 
 2. All religious bodies should, subject to reasonable 
 regulations, be allowed by Statute to provide, in all Public 
 Elementary Schools, whether Voluntary or Board, for the 
 religious teaching of the children of their own people at 
 their own expense, and on their own systems. 
 
 8. The appointment and dismissal of teachers in Church 
 Schools should remain as provided by the existing Trust 
 Deeds. 
 
 Joint Conference of Convocations' Resolutions. 
 
 A Joint Conference of the four Houses of Convocation 
 was held in London in July 1901, when the following 
 resolutions were passed : — 
 
212 APPENDIX 
 
 1. That all schools be financed as far as the cost of 
 maintenance, exclusive of repairs of the structure in Volun- 
 tary Schools, is concerned out of public funds, whether 
 Imperial or local, and that it be no condition of participation 
 in these funds by Voluntary Schools whether any form of 
 religious instruction be or be not taught in those schools. 
 
 2. That the funds needed for capital expenditure on the 
 school buildings, as well as for necessary extensions and 
 structural alterations, be provided by the body to which the 
 school belongs, but that the managers be not liable for any 
 other expenditure. 
 
 3. That the government of every school, and especially 
 the appointment and dismissal of the teachers, be left in the 
 hands of the present committee of management, with the 
 addition of certain members appointed by or under rules 
 made by the local authority, such additional members not to 
 exceed one- third of the whole number. 
 
 4. That whenever a reasonable number of parents desire 
 that religious instruction in accordance with their own belief 
 should be given to their children, opportunity for such 
 instruction should be secured to them by statute in all 
 Elementary Schools, provided that this can be done without 
 expense to the managers. 
 
 5. That, in view of the grave issues involved in the 
 conclusions arrived at in the foregoing resolutions, a united 
 effort be made by Churchmen to urge upon his Majesty's 
 Government the necessity of introducing and pressing 
 during the coming session legislation on the lines therein 
 indicated. 
 
 Between the two sets of resolutions there were three 
 chief points of agreement, viz. : — 
 
 1. Cost of maintaining secular instruction to be paid 
 from public funds. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 2. Religious bodies allowed by statute to provide religious 
 instruction in their own way in all Elementary Schools. 
 
 3 Cost of religious teaching to be paid by denomination 
 to which school belongs. 
 
 Two additions were made by the Conference resolutions, 
 namely : — 
 
 1. That the structural repairs and alterations of Volun- 
 tary Schools were to be thrown upon the body to which the 
 school belongs, and provided by the managers. 
 
 2. That there should be an addition, not tD exceed one- 
 third, to the managing body of Voluntary Church Schools 
 of members appointed through the local authority. 
 
 It was on the basis of the resolutions of the Joint Com- 
 mittee's Convocation that the new Education Bill was 
 eventually based, and it should be observed that this 
 policy, which was widely acquiesced in by Churchmen 
 throughout the country, involved a great sacrifice of 
 position as regards all Church Schools, inasmuch as it 
 abandoned what had heretofore been put forward by the 
 National Society as a vital principle, viz. — that the trust 
 deeds of the school should remain untouched. It was 
 obvious from the first that there would have to be in the 
 new Bill, formulated in accordance with the resolutions of 
 the Committee of Convocation, considerable alterations in 
 the management clause of the trust. 
 
 In the year 1902 the new Education Bill was introduced 
 into Parliament. The Committee met, and passed the 
 following resolutions : — 
 
 I. " The Committee are of opinion that, with regard to 
 all the circumstances of the case, and particularly to the 
 pledge given to deal with London early next session, the 
 
214 APPENDIX 
 
 Bill introduced by his Majesty's Government promises to 
 provide for an equitable settlement of the education question. 
 The Committee are, however, of opinion that the value of 
 ■ the Bill is greatly impaired by the provision for leaving to 
 the option of the local authorities whether or not they shall 
 become the authority for elementary education ; and they 
 regret the absence of any provision for affording facilities in 
 all schools for such special religious instruction as a reason- 
 able number of parents may desire for their children. But, 
 whatever criticism may be made in detail, the Committee 
 earnestly hope that the Bill will be pressed forward at an 
 early date after Easter, and passed into law during the 
 present session of Parliament ; since the miscarriage of 
 another education measure would cause educationists through- 
 out the country the keenest disappointment." 
 
 II. " The Committee are of opinion that no time should 
 be lost in preparing to meet the new conditions which will 
 arise when the Bill becomes law, and they hope to raise a 
 central fund for helping localities where the operation of the 
 Bill may be found to press hardly. They also propose to 
 raise a fund forthwith to enable the poorer schools in the 
 county of London to maintain their ground pending the 
 settlement of the education question so far as London is 
 concerned." 
 
 On Friday, May 16, the representatives of the Houses 
 of Convocation and Laymen, and of the Diocesan Boards, 
 Conferences and Associations met the Committee of the 
 National Society in deliberation, the chair being taken by 
 his Grace the late Archbishop of Canterbury. Various 
 important amendments of the Bill before Parliament were 
 approved, and forwarded to the proper quarter. 
 
 In most cases the required modifications were accepted. 
 
 During the passage of the Bill through Parliament 
 there was considerable danger that the proportion between 
 
APPENDIX 215 
 
 the foundation and other managers under the Bill would 
 be altered to the prejudice of Church Schools. The Com- 
 mittee took steps to bring before those concerned the 
 injustice of such an alteration, and his Majesty's Govern- 
 ment maintained the proportion as originally fixed by 
 the Bill. 
 
 When the discussion was resumed in the autumn 
 session of Parliament the Committee, as soon as they heard 
 of the Kenyon-Slaney Amendment (which seriously affected 
 the trusts under which the schools in connection with the 
 National Society are held), met and unanimously passed 
 the following resolution : — 
 
 "The Committee earnestly protest against the amend- 
 ment recently introduced into the Education Bill on the 
 motion of Col. Kenyon-Slaney, and strongly hope that 
 Churchmen will use their best endeavour to secure an 
 alteration before the Bill becomes law." 
 
 Notwithstanding every effort made throughout the 
 country, the resolution objected to was, in a somewhat 
 altered form, adopted by Parliament. The Act received 
 Royal Assent on December 18, and a similar Act for 
 London on August 14, 1903. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBB 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 '^EC'D LD 
 
 im 
 
 9 lyb^ 
 
 REC'D LD. 
 
 MAR 7 1963 
 
 2JUN'63AG 
 
 Muum 
 
 «rs 
 
 2s- 
 
 ..M' 
 
 ^-n 7 7368; 
 
 
 %i^ 
 
 10 RNi 1 3 
 
 #a 3i 
 
 jD 21A-50m-3,'62 
 
 General Library 
 
YB OAcMd