ployed in their instruction. This was about one child in eight for whom poor-relief was being extended, and for whom the State stood more or less in loco parentis. For these children, the Report held, "every dictate of humanity and wise economy demands that the State should make immediate and thorough provision in schools and teachers of the right kind."

Of the system of apprenticing the children of paupers, Mr. Mosely wrote:

The system of education under the old poor law was that of parish apprenticeship. Pauper children were bound apprentices to such persons as were supposed capable of instructing them in some useful calling. In some cases this was by compulsion, the apprentices being assigned to different rate-payers, who render themselves liable to fines if they refuse to receive them, which fines sometimes went to the rates, and in other cases were paid as premiums to persons who afterward took these apprentices. Another method of apprenticeship was by premiums paid from the rates to masters who, in consideration of such premiums, were contented to take pauper children as apprentices. The evils of this system were manifold:

Ist. As it regarded the independent laborer, whom, by its competition, it prevented "from getting his children out, except by making them parish paupers, he having no means of offering the advantages given by the parish," and in whom it discouraged that which in a parent is the strongest motive to self-denial, forethought, and industry—a desire to provide for his children.

2dly. As it regards those to whom the children were apprenticed; who, when they took them on compulsion, took them at an inconvenience and a disadvantage-to whom these parish apprentices 'were much worse servants and less under control than others," who often found them "hostile both in conduct and disposition, ready listeners, retailers of falsehood and scandal of the family affairs, ready agents of mischief of the parents and other persons ill disposed to their employers," who "not infrequently excited the children to disobedience, in order to get their indentures cancelled," they were the unwilling servants of unwilling masters; they could not be trusted, and yet could not be dismissed. The demoralization of the apprenThey disseminate in the parish

tices made them undesirable inmates. the morals of the workhouse.

3dly. As it regards the children themselves:

1. They were often apprenticed to "needy persons, to whom the premium offered was an irresistible temptation to apply for them," and "after a certain interval had been allowed to elapse, means were not unfrequently taken to disgust them with their occupation, and to render their situations so irksome as to make them abscond."

2. They were looked upon by such persons as "defenseless, and deserted by their natural protectors," and were often cruelly treated. So that to be treated "worse than a parish apprentice" has passed into a proverb.

3. Not only was their moral culture neglected, but their moral wellbeing was often totally disregarded. The facts under this head are fearful. There was a mutual contamination. The system appears, says Mr. Austin, to have led directly to cruelty, immorality, and suffering, although, in some cases, apprenticeship was not unproductive of certain beneficial results to both master and apprentice.

4. Their instruction in any useful calling was for the most part neglected, because their masters were often unfit to teach them, and because they were obstinately unwilling to learn. The position which the parish apprentice occupied in the house was therefore commonly that of the household drudge.

It is scarcely to be wondered at, that among a race thus born in pauperism, and educated to it, pauperism became hereditary.

When the Poor Law Board abolished the system of education by apprenticeship, they took upon themselves the responsibility of providing some better form of education. Every workhouse was accordingly required to provide a schoolmaster who should educate the children. For which purpose they were to be completely separated from the adults, and instructed for at least three hours every day.

Lest the guardians should be tempted to employ inefficient schoolmasters, that they might not have to pay them high salaries, it was afterward provided that the salaries of workhouse schoolmasters should be paid out of a grant voted specially for that purpose by Parliament; and, later still, these salaries were ordered to be determined by your Lordships, upon examination by Her Majesty's Inspectors.

302. Typical Reasoning in Opposition to Free Schools (Kay-Shuttleworth, Sir James, Public Education as affected by the Minutes of the Committee of Privy Council, 1846–52. London, 1853)

The following brief extract from the above volume is typical of much of the reasoning of the time in favor of supporting schools by public grants, coupled with tuition fees, in preference to the creation of a system of national education based on taxation.

A weekly payment from the parents of scholars is that form of taxation, the justice of which is most apparent, to the humbler classes. Every one who has even an elementary knowledge of finance is aware that no tax can be largely productive from which the great mass of the people are exempt.

The moral advantage of a tax on the poor in the form of school pence

is, that it appeals to the sense of paternal duty. It enforces a lesson of domestic piety. It establishes the parental authority, and vindicates personal freedom. The child is neither wholly educated by religious charity, nor by the State. He owes to his parents that honor and obedience, which are the source of domestic tranquillity, and to which the promise of long life is attached. Let no one rudely interfere with the bonds of filial reverence and affection. Especially is it the interest of the State to make these the primal elements of social order. Nor can the paternal charities of a wise commonwealth be substituted for the personal ties of parental love and esteem, without undermining society at its base.

The parent should not be led to regard the school as the privilege of the citizen, so much as another scene of household duty. Those communities are neither most prosperous, nor most happy, in which the political or social relations of the family are more prominent than the domestic. That which happily distinguishes the Saxon and Teutonic races is, the prevalence of the idea of “home.” To make the households of the poor, scenes of Christian peace, is the first object of the school. Why then should we substitute its external relation for its internal the idea of the citizen, for that of the parent — the sense of political or social rights, for those of domestic duties - the claim of public privilege, for the personal law of conscience?

303. The Duke of Newcastle Commission Report

(Summary by Macnamera, J. T. In Binn's A Century of Education, pp. 268–69. London, 1898)

In 1858 a new parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, commonly known as the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, was appointed to review educational conditions, progress, and needs, and to report on the same to Parliament. The Commission reported in 1861. The following is a good brief summary of its findings and recommendations. It was this Commission which proposed the "payment by results" plan, adopted in 1862.

a. Summary of Findings.

1. One in every eight of the population was at some time in some school or other.

2. Of the estimated number of two and a half 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 estimated at only 74.35 per cent of the scholars on the books.

5. The number of assisted schools amounted to 6897, containing 917,255 scholars; while 15,750 denominational schools, and about 317

others, containing together 691,393 scholars, were outside the range of the operations of the department.

6. Of the pupils in the inspected schools not more than one-fourth of the children were receiving a good education, the instruction given being too much adapted to the elder scholars to the neglect of the younger

ones.

b. Chief Recommendations.

1. That all assistance given to the annual maintenance of schools should be simplified and reduced to grants of two kinds. The first of these grants should 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 was to be ascertained by the inspectors. The second was to 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 would be ascertained by examiners appointed by county and borough boards of education hereinafter described.

2. That no school should be entitled to these grants which did not fulfil the following general conditions: The school would have to be registered at the office of the Privy Council, on the report of the inspector, as an elementary school for the education of the poor. The school would have to be certified by the inspector to be healthy and properly drained and ventilated, and supplied with offices; and the principal school-room must contain at least eight square feet of superficial area for each child in average daily attendance.

With a view to making the teaching in schools more effective and more evenly distributed among the scholars, the Commission recornmended what has since been known as "payment by results." "There is only one way," the Commission reported, "of securing this result, which is to institute a searching examination by competent authority of every child in every school to which grants are to be paid, with a view to ascertaining whether these indispensable elements of knowledge are thoroughly acquired, and to make the prospects and position of the teacher dependent, to a considerable extent, on the results of this examination."

Of these recommendations, that one which proposed that education should be supported partly by means of a local rate bore no immediate fruit. The other main suggestions, viz., that the Parliamentary grant should be paid directly to the managers, who should arrange all questions of stipend with their teachers, and that this grant should be made to depend largely on the record of individual examination of the scholars, formed the backbone of Mr. Lowe's Revised Code.

The bedrock principle of this famous code, the principle of "payment by results," was bitterly challenged by educationists; but it held

the field for thirty years. In recent years, however, it has been steadily departed from, with, as I think, the most salutary effects upon the permanent value and fruitfulness of the teaching given.

304. The Elementary Education Act of 1870

(Elementary Education Act; 33 and 34 Victoria, chap. 75)

In 1870 the culmination of over sixty years of struggle to secure the beginnings of national organization for education was reached, and the Act providing for the organization of elementary education to supply deficiencies, and further providing that the Board Schools should be free from religious compulsion, was secured.

The essential features of the Act of 1870 were:

There shall be provided for every school district a sufficient amount of accommodation in public elementary schools (as hereinafter defined) available for all the children resident in such district for whose elementary education efficient and suitable provision is not otherwise made; and where there is an insufficient amount of such accommodation, in this act referred to as "public school accommodation," the deficiency shall be supplied in the manner provided by this act.

Where the education department, in the manner provided by this act, are satisfied and have given public notice that there is an insufficient amount of public school accommodation for any school district, and the deficiency is not supplied as hereinafter required, a school board shall be formed for such district and shall supply such deficiency, and in case of default by the school board the education department shall cause the duty of such board to be performed in the manner provided by this act.

Every elementary school which is conducted in accordance with the following regulations shall be a public elementary school within the meaning of this act; and every public elementary school shall be conducted in accordance with the following regulations (a copy of which regulations shall be conspicuously put up in every such school); namely, (1) it shall not be required, as a condition of any child being admitted in or continuing in the school, that he shall attend or abstain from attending any Sunday School or any place of religious worship, or that he shall attend any religious observance or any instruction in religious subjects in the school or elsewhere, from which observance or instruction he may be withdrawn by his parent, or that he shall, if withdrawn by his parent, attend the school on any day exclusively set apart for religious observance by the religious body to which his parent belongs: (2) the time or times during which any religious observance is practiced or instruction in religious subjects is given at any meeting of the school shall be either at the beginning, or at the end, or at the beginning and the end of such meeting.