NA TURE 



577 



THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 1890. 



THE REVISED INSTRUCTIONS TO 

 INSPECTORS. 



LAST year it was a matter of considerable complaint 

 against the Education Department that the Draft 

 Code was presented to Parliament unaccompanied by 

 the new instructions to inspectors, without which it 

 could neither be satisfactorily interpreted nor adequately 

 discussed. No such complaint can be made this year. 

 The issue of the new Code, which promises to place 

 elementary schools under what is practically a new system 

 of regulations, has been followed within a few days by 

 a revised edition of the instructions to inspectors, in 

 which the changes are correspondingly large. Indeed, 

 more than half of the document consists of new matter. 



On the whole, the approbation which has greeted Mr. 

 Kekewich's Code may be extended to the instructions 

 by which it is explained. So far as we can see, there 

 is no shuffling, no attempt to minimise or to alter the 

 practical effect of the reforms which are conceded on 

 paper in the Code. 



The main alterations occur in those parts of the instruc- 

 tions which are to guide the inspector in awarding the 

 Parliamentary grant under the new regime. It will be 

 remembered that the system of payment on the results 

 of individual examination disappears almost completely, 

 and is replaced by a grant made up of three parts — a 

 "principal grant" of \2s. 6d. or 145'., a grant of \s. 6d. or 

 IS. for discipline and organization, and a payment as 

 before on results of examination in the so-called " addi- 

 tional subjects." The mode of examination to be adopted 

 in future in the elementary subjects on which the "prin- 

 cipal grant " depends is substantially that already in use 

 for "class subjects." That is to say, there will be a 

 collective examination by sample, a certain proportion 

 of children out of each class being chosen at random 

 for examination by the inspector, the teacher being 

 always invited to add a few of his most forward scholars, 

 so that the school may not be injured by any accident in 

 the selection. Several alternative modes of selection 

 are suggested, and the inspector is expressly asked to 

 vary his method from time to time, rather than to adopt 

 any uniform plan. Teachers and managers may hear 

 the oral examination and see the papers, but they are to 

 be warned that " it is not by studying past questions, nor 

 by trying to forecast the kind of questions likely to be 

 set hereafter, but by teaching the subject with good sense 

 and thoroughness that the requirements of the Depart- 

 ment will be best fulfilled, and the truest educational 

 success achieved." 



The higher " principal grant " is not to be awarded unless 

 a high standard of proficiency is reached in all three ele- 

 mentary subjects. If the scholars do not reach the 

 standard required for the lower " principal grant," the 

 managers are to be warned that next year the grant may 

 be discontinued ; and, in all cases where the higher 

 grant is not awarded, the points in which the school is 

 deficient are to be clearly indicated to the managers. 



These regulations, if wisely carried out, must be a 

 great improvement on those under which the grant is at 

 Vol. xli.— No. 1069. 



present assessed. The old barbarous system of bleeding 

 a bad school to death by diminishing its grant below the 

 minimum required for its efficient maintenance will be 

 discontinued. In place of this a school, so long as it 

 receives anything, will receive enough to enable it to be 

 efficient if the teachers and managers are up to their 

 work. If such a school fails to reach the required 

 standard, though supplied with public aid on as liberal a 

 scale as that on which multitudes of schools do contrive to 

 be efficient, it will simply be removed from the list of grant- 

 earning schools. This is the rational course, if carried out 

 in practice, but very much will depend on the inspector. 

 It is sincerely to be hoped that the instructions will be 

 carried out in such a way as to ensure that the " liberal 

 grant now offered to comparatively humble schools shall 

 serve as an aid and stimulus to improvement, and not as 

 a pretext for remaining content with a low standard of 

 duty." 



With the disappearance of payment on individual re- 

 sults in the elementary subjects, the necessity for many 

 of the minute regulations as to the exact meaning of 

 a "pass" in each subject disappears also. But the 

 necessity still remains for the inspector to keep in mind 

 the standard of an individual pass for such purposes as 

 that of the scholar requiring a " labour pass " either for 

 half-time or whole-time exemption. 



A few modifications are made in the instructions re- 

 specting the three elementary subjects. The justice of the 

 oft-repeated complaints which have been made of the 

 excessive time devoted to English grammar is recognized, 

 not only in the altered regulations for English, but in 

 a great reduction in the " spelling " requirements. As 

 regards reading, it is suggested that a class of older 

 scholars should be set to read a passage to themselves 

 while another class is being examined, and then be 

 questioned as to its matter. Writing will be partly 

 tested by examination of school copy-books, not merely 

 by a piece of writing executed during the anxious and 

 nervous hours of the inspector's visit. 



But the most important changes bearing on the school 

 curriculum — indeed, perhaps, on the whole, the most 

 important changes in the whole document — are those 

 passages in which an attempt is made to link the in- 

 struction of the school to the life of the home. On the 

 one hand, the co-operation of the parents is to be expressly 

 invited ; on the other hand, their special wants are to be 

 more directly consulted. For example, it is pointed out 

 that " in some good schools the aid of the parents has 

 been successfully enlisted, and they have been urged to 

 hear their children read aloud from a newspaper or from 

 a book for a few minutes at home in every day. The 

 amount of oral practice which any one child can obtain 

 in a large class is obviously insufficient ; and a little 

 home exercise in reading aloud is often found to have an 

 excellent effect." On the other hand, the elder girls are 

 to be allowed to bring from home garments that want 

 mending, and to repair them in school under the teachers' 

 supervision — an arrangement which will "connect the 

 school-work usefully with the every-day life of the 

 scholars." There are other hints to a similar effect, as in 

 the concluding paragraphs of the instructions, which 

 enumerate the ways in which, besides conforming to the 

 requirements of the Code, a school may seek " to render 



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