where it is not practicable to establish a fully organised higher elementary school; but for such “higher tops” no central grant is available. The total number of scholars upon the registers of higher elementary schools (England) in 1907–1908 was: New Type, 3178 (against 2715 in the previous year); Old Type, 4492 (against 5866 in the previous year).
The total expenditure (exclusive of capital outlay) of the local authorities (1906–1907) in England only upon elementary education, including “industrial” and “special” schools, was £19,776,733, of which (a) £10,408,242 was met by the ordinary parliamentary grant, and (b) £8,930,468 was the balance required to be Expenditure
on elementary education.met by rates, the difference being represented by receipts from various sources. The average cost per child of elementary schools in England and Wales (excluding London) may be taken at £3 (including London £3, 4s. 10d.), and the average central grant (excluding grants for special purposes) at 41s., leaving 19s. to be raised locally.
The training of teachers for the two great branches of public education, elementary and secondary respectively, is an important part of the general administrative problem. Since the middle of the 19th century there has been a great development of public opinion with regard to their professional qualifications. Sir Preliminary training of elementary teachers.Joshua Fitch (Ency. Brit. 10th ed.) pointed out that the full appreciation of the importance of training began at the lower end of the social scale. Shuttleworth and Tufnell in 1846 urged the necessity of special training for the primary teacher, and hoped to establish State Training Colleges to supply this want; but the one college at Battersea which was founded as an experiment was soon transferred to the National Society (the “National Society for educating the poor in the principles of the Established Church”: founded in 1811). Before this, Bell and Lancaster had made arrangements in their model schools for the reception of a few young people to learn the system by practice. In Glasgow, David Stow, who founded in 1826 the Normal Seminary which afterwards became the Free Church College, was one of the first to insist on the need of systematic professional preparation. The religious bodies in England, notably the Established Church, availed themselves promptly of the failure of the central government, and a number of diocesan colleges for men, and separately for women, were gradually established. In 1854 the British and Foreign School Society (founded 1808) placed their institutes at the Borough Road and Stockwell on a collegiate footing, and subsequently founded other colleges at Swansea, Bangor, Darlington and Saffron Walden; the Roman Catholic Church provided two for women and one for men; and the Wesleyans two, one for each sex. The new provincial colleges of university rank were invited by the Education Department to attach normal classes to their ordinary course and to make provision for special training and suitable practice in schools for those students who desired to become teachers. Thus the government came to recognize two kinds of training schools—the residential colleges of the old type and the day colleges attached to institutions of university rank; both were subsidized by grants from the Treasury, and regularly inspected. As the need of special training for teachers became further recognized by the consideration of the same question as regards teachers in higher and intermediate schools (Cambridge instituting in 1879 examinations for a teacher’s diploma, and other universities providing courses for secondary as well as primary teachers, and establishing professorships of education), the attitude of the government, i.e. the Board of Education, towards the problem gradually became more and more a subject of controversy and of public interest, as indicated by the clause in the Act of 1899 providing for a public registration of qualified teachers and for the gradual elimination from the profession of those who were unqualified. And meanwhile the increased solidarity of the National Union of Teachers (founded in 1870), the trade union, so to speak, of the teachers, brought an important body of professional opinion to bear on the discussion of their own interests.
The question of the preliminary education of elementary teachers had after some years of discussion reached a critical stage in 1909. The history of pupil teachership as a method of concurrent instruction and employment shows that it was in its inception something in the nature of a makeshift; the ideal placed before local education authorities in the recent regulations and reports of the Board of Education is the alternative system whereby with the aid of national bursaries (instituted in 1907) “the general education of future teachers may be continued in secondary schools until the age of seventeen or eighteen, and all attempts to obtain a practical experience of elementary school work may be deferred until the training college is entered, or at least until an examination making a natural break in that general education and qualifying for an admission to a training college has been passed.” Under the revised pupil-teacher system established by the regulations of 1903 provision is made for the instruction of pupil teachers in centres which as far as possible are attached to secondary schools receiving grants from the Board of Education under the regulations for secondary schools, about two-thirds of the secondary schools on the grant list undertaking this work. Accordingly, the result of recent changes is to modify the old system in two ways: first by providing the alternative of a full course of secondary education, secondly by associating pupil teachership itself as far as possible with part-time attendance at a secondary school. The total number of pupil teachers recognized during the year 1907–1908 was 20,571, and of these 9770 were in centres forming integral parts of secondary schools. The number of bursars who passed the leaving examination was 1486.
One of the principal difficulties which confronted the state and the local authorities in their task of organizing an improved system of public education under the act of 1902 lay in the deficiency of training colleges in view of the increased number of teachers. Local authorities naturally hesitated to burden themselves with the Training colleges.cost of providing such institutions in view of the fact that there is nothing to prevent teachers trained at great expense by one authority taking service under a less public-spirited authority who had contributed nothing to such training; hence a widespread feeling that the provision of training colleges should be undertaken by the state as a matter of national concern. Under these circumstances a new system of building grants in aid of the establishment of training colleges was instituted in 1905. In 1906 these grants were raised from 25 to 75% of the capital expenditure, but were limited to colleges provided by local authorities. A further difficulty in view of the municipalization of education arose from the fact that the majority of the residential colleges were in the hands of denominational trusts which did not admit a conscience clause. Under the presidency of Mr McKenna in 1907, the Board of Education, in regulations which excited much controversy, “with a view to throwing open as far as possible the advantages of a course of training in colleges supported mainly by public funds to all students who are qualified to profit by it irrespective of religious creed or social status,” laid down that the application of a candidate might in no circumstances be rejected on any religious ground, nor on the ground of social antecedents or the like. The same regulations provided that no new training colleges would be recognized except on terms of compliance with certain conditions as to freedom from denominational restrictions or requirements. The obligation as to religious exemptions has since been limited to 50% of the admissions. There were in attendance (Statistics, England, 1907–1908) in the various colleges, 6561 women and 2835 men, of whom 1619 women and 335 men were in colleges provided by local education authorities. The grants made by the Board of Education for training colleges were as follows: maintenance grants £383,851; building grants £45,000. These figures include Wales.
The fear has been widely entertained that a considerable part of the national expenditure upon elementary education is wasted for want of an effective system of continuative instruction to be given out of working hours to adolescents engaged in industrial employment. The whole subject was exhaustively
