FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF SECONDARY EDUCATION. 1105 
which an impecunious committee feels itself at liberty to resort. 
Consequently, even in really good schools, assistant masters feel 
that there is no career open to talent, and, worse still, that through 
the fluctuations of finance they have no security of tenure. (3) A 
large proportion of schools are inefficient, because they cannot 
afford to engage highly-qualified assistants. There is a limit to 
the lowering of salaries, and as so many school authorities have 
set themselves to discover that limit, the natural result is that 
the supply of well-qualified men and women is growing less and 
less. It is not uncommon in private schools to find a graduate 
of considerable ability preparing pupils for University Public 
Examinations, at a salary of ten shillings a week and residence. 
Even in some of the largest Denominational Schools, the junior 
masters sometimes receive as little as £40 with residence. Is it 
any wonder that able men are diverted to other professions, and 
that those assistants who have adopted the teaching profession 
“ for better, for worse,” sometimes hear insulting innuendoes about 
*‘ cheap” masters ! 
Is there any practicable method for securing reform? It is of 
no possible use to propound an ideal system of education which 
the founders of a new Utopia might with advantage establish. 
We have to reckon with existing conditions, with the inertia of 
schools, and with the extraordinary ignorance and apathy of the 
general public in all educational questions. The isolation of the 
various colonies in educational matters makes it necessary to 
convince separately those who control the respective systems, and 
the federation of the colonies is not in the least likely to make 
any alteration in this respect. The relation of Government 
towards secondary education needs adjusting, and probably no 
scheme of reform is practicable without the intelligent and discreet 
intervention of the State. Not that large grants of public money 
are required ; such a contention, in the present condition of 
Colonial finance, would be fatal even to the discussion of the 
question; but the State must intervene in some way as the 
organiser and the patron of secondary education, so that schools 
may find it worth their while to reform themselves by receiving 
encouragement for good work, and suffering some disabilities for 
inefficiency. The problem here is that Governments should 
discharge their obligation to supervise, and yet refrain from undue 
interference, or any attempt to produce uniformity. These are 
but generalities ; but State interference is so much of a bugbear 
to many, that its limitations must be insisted on at the outset. 
I venture to propose a connected scheme which seems to contain 
some promise of practicability and effectiveness. The two main 
lines of necessary reform are—first, to ascertain which schools are 
efficient, and to give these official recognition and encouragement ; 
and, secondly, as far as possible to ensure that secondary teachers 
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