was not only possible with the present machinery, but that it was actually going on; and that the supply of those means was rapidly overtaking the needs of the population. At any rate, the subject was one which needed to be handled with singular circumspection and care, with the foresight of a statesman, as well as with the sympathy and interest of a philanthropist. Hasty or crude legislation on such a subject was especially to be dreaded, and school managers and teachers looked forward with interest to the probable discussion of the subject in the ensuing Parliament, and to possible changes in the minor details of administration; which, without affecting the principle of that administration, would in some degree meet the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners.

In these circumstances, it was a startling thing to find the Vice-President of the Committee of Council, who is virtually the minister of public instruction in England, issuing, in the month of July, a document, under the name of a 'Revised Code,' which abrogated all the former 'Minutes' and regulations, and established an entirely new system. Though professedly based on the Report of the Royal Commissioners, it is a far bolder and more revolutionary measure than that Report ventured to recommend. As a piece of legislation, it is probably one of the most hastily and unskilfully devised schemes which have ever been put forth by a public department. Many of its details are absolutely impracticable; and it affords evidence, from beginning to end, of an amount of administrative incapacity, and an ignorance of the real work and difficulties of our elementary schools, which, to say the least, is remarkable. Nevertheless, if its principle were right, the details could easily be amended. But it is because we believe that the proposed plan is fundamentally vicious in principle, that we desire to draw attention to some of its specific provisions, and to show with how serious a danger the education of the country is threatened.

In doing this, we shall avail ourselves freely of the arguments of those writers-many of them practically familiar with the business of popular education-who have already pointed out the probable influence of the Revised Code. It will suffice

if we enumerate seriatim the objections to which it is fairly open.

I. It proposes to make all grants to schools dependent on the result of an individual examination of the children who have attended school a given number of times in the year, and who are to be arranged, for the purposes of the examination, in groups, according to age. The objections to this provision are so well pointed out by Mr. John Martin, that we give them at length.*

'If a school were like a workshop, and no article paid for till it had received the last polish, the most rigid economist might be satisfied. But it is not. It may be conceded that the application of this test would effect some good, that it would produce a greater facility and accuracy in reading and ciphering in a limited number of scholars; but it will not sensibly affect that large number of children who leave school half taught. The power of the test will altogether fail to reach the mass of idle, irregular children, whose education has been previously neglected, and who form so large a proportion in thousands of schools. In these schools, onequarter of the children will earn nothing by the 1d. attendance, not having been present a hundred times; while another body of them, from their age and ignorance on entering, could by no exertion be brought up to pass the required test; so that they would never be presented for examination, and the temptation to neglect them altogether will be almost irresistible. It will not pay to teach them.

"The real and only remedy for what is certainly a deplorable state of things, is good Infant-schools; and these are all but ignored under the new Code. If they had been duly encouraged since 1846, there would not have been complaints that so many children of ten years old were unable to read.

'Several other serious evils would follow from this mode of distributing the educational grant. It will suffice to mention three. (1.) The payment for attendances, by which individual scholars may gain twenty shillings to twenty-eight shillings for the school, places managers and teachers in a false position in relation to

* 'Thoughts suggested by the Suspension of the Revised Education Code. By John Martin, Hon. Sec. of the Metropolitan Training Institution.' Seeley.

parents, which, in the latter part of the school year, will be very subversive of discipline. A child not attending on the day of inspection, or eight days in the last month of the year, may lose the school twenty-eight shillings-a fact which will be known to the parents, and render the master almost powerless. This evil can scarcely be appreciated by those who are not much in schools, and brought into personal contact with parents on the subject of discipline. (2.) The power and discretion vested in the Examiner is too great. The application of the test will be intolerable. Will it be endured, that the Inspector's judgment on each case is to be secret, and that thirty pounds or more in a school should depend on the caprice or peculiar standard of the Examiner ? Or will the judgment be openly pronounced in presence of an influential company of managers? Will they submit to see a scholar rejected, when they think he reads well? How many false spellings in the dictation lesson will forfeit onethird of the grant? What weight is quality of writing to have in the dictation lesson ? Is one slip in working a sum to be fatal, or is a boy to have a second trial? Will the Inspectors undertake such an invidious duty? Or again, what will happen when the inspection occurs in a severe frost ? or during a prevailing epidemic? or, in agricultural districts, during, or soon after, harvest? (3.) In most schools for the working classes, there are periods of the year when the average attendance is always twenty to fifty per cent. less than at other times. To make a grant to the school depend, in any great degree, on the presence of children at a time when they cannot be assembled, must work manifest injustice. The only basis on which the grant can be fairly administered, is the average attendances of the year; while the actual amount per head to any one school should vary according to general efficiency, and other circumstances.'

II. It diminishes the grants to Training Colleges, withdraws from the students all the inducements to remain for longer periods of training, and necessitates a lower standard of acquirement.

Training institutions are by the new arrangement placed in a worse position than Elementary Schools. A large portion of their income is at once withdrawn, and no compensation for the loss is proposed. The ordinary sum payable in the form of exhibitions is diminished by one-fifth; sums payable

as allowances for teaching remain as before, and every other form of aid is cancelled altogether. The Report of the Education Commission recommended that some access should be left to the Training Colleges, and through them to the teachers' profession, for the benefit of persons who had not been pupil-teachers. But the express object of this provision was to encourage the employment of well-trained and certified teachers in other than Elementary Schools. To this end the Commissioners advised that private and adventure schools, if conducted by teachers holding certificates of merit, should, under certain conditions, be permitted to receive the inspection and aid of the Government. Now, the new Minutes accept onehalf of the proposals of the Commissioners on this point, and reject the other half. They compel the Training Colleges to reserve one-fifth of their accommodation for a certain class of candidates, and at the same time make arrangements which will effectually prevent this class from seeking admission. Moreover, the provision by which pupil-teachers may, at the expiration of their five years, 'be provisionally certificated for service in small rural schools,' until twenty-five years of age, without residence in a Training College at all, will probably have the effect of discouraging the employment of trained teachers in such schools. Of course, teachers of this class will be obtainable at smaller salaries; and unless the number of children in a school exceeds eighty, managers will sustain no loss of Capitation Grant by employing them. Even where the number of children amounts to one hundred, it will often be found cheaper, with a poor or struggling school, to dispense with a pupil-teacher, to engage an untrained youth with a provisional certificate, and to submit to the deduction of £10 from the Annual Grant. Thus, the effect of the new arrangement will be to diminish the number of schools under inspection in which it shall be necessary to employ trained teachers, while, at the same time, nothing is done to make the certificate useful or desirable to teachers of other schools. And yet this is the moment at which the Colleges are to be forced to keep one-fifth of their accommodation available for students who are to be attracted from other quarters. It is scarcely possible that this arrangement can

fail to inflict severe loss on every Training College in the kingdom.

The sudden withdrawal of the grants from lecturers and certified assistants in these institutions, is one of the most inexplicable features of the new Code. It may not be generally known that, with a view to secure high teaching power, and to encourage a superior body of men to seek the office of tutor in Training Colleges, the Committee of Council, about seven years ago, established special Examinations for Lecturers in History, Mathematics, Geography, and English Literature, respectively. These examinations were conducted by men of the highest eminence in their several departments, and were extremely severe. Of the thirty lecturers who have passed the examinations, many are graduates of universities, and all had prepared themselves by a laborious course of special study, to meet the requirements of the Government. The stipulation then made was, that £100 should be granted by way of augmentation to the annual salary of each lecturer, so long as the reports of Her Majesty's Inspector on his teaching continued to be favourable. The arrangements of the Training Colleges and of the lecturers were made on the faith of this understanding, and the result upon the teaching in the Colleges has been most satisfactory. Every Report presented to the Government on the working of the arrangement has been strongly favourable to its continuance.

It is worthy of notice, that this part of the scheme, which threatens to ruin some of the Training Colleges, and to impoverish and embarrass them all, is in direct opposition to the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners. No part of their Report was more explicit than that in which they said, 'We do not recommend any reduction in the amount of aid at present given to the Colleges in various forms. In other parts of their Report, they bear strong testimony to the efficiency of the work done in these institutions. They point out, that as this work is done for the nation, and not for any particular district, it is not reasonable to expect that they will be supported by local subscriptions or class sympathy, in the same way as an Elementary School; and they infer that