TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 707 
FRIDAY, AUGUST 2. 
The following Papers were read :— 
1. The English Scholarship System: its Principles and Results. 
By Professor M. E. Sapier, LL.D., and H. Bompas Smiru, M.A. 
The paper of which this is a summary is the outcome of an inquiry conducted 
by the authors in different parts of England during the summer of 1907, with the 
help of officers of local education authorities and of headmasters, headmistresses, 
and other teachers in elementary and secondary schools. 
The scholarship system is a distinctive mark of English education. Its 
beginnings date from the Middle Ages. Its modern developments are connected 
with the growth of competitive examinations, upon which it largely depends. 
There has always been in England a readiness to help forward youths of excep- 
tional promise to intellectual opportunities appropriate to their powers. But 
there has also been a great reluctance to place secondary and higher education 
under the direct control of the State, and consequently a preference for a variety 
of semi-independent schools representing different social traditions and points of 
view. ‘These two facts in combination resulted in the scholarship system, to 
which in the mid-Victorian era the general belief in the benefit of open competition 
gave a wider vogue. During the last generation, however, new forces have 
subjected English educational arrangements to a heavy strain. Improved higher 
education had become on civic and economic grounds a national necessity. New 
sections of the community were demanding access to secondary schools. It 
became necessary, therefore, either to extend the scholarship system or to embark 
upon a policy of free, or nearly free, secondary and higher education in institutions 
under direct public control. The latter policy would have been wasteful of 
existing educational resources. Nor is the remission of school fees sufficient by 
itself to enable the poorest scholars to postpone the time of their entrance into 
wage-earning occupations. Maintenance allowances are also necessary. The 
scholarship policy has enabled the local authorities established under the Educa- 
tion Act of 1902 to meet in the quickest and most economical manner the demand 
for extended facilities for secondary education, a demand accelerated by new 
Government regulations for the training of pupil-teachers. The fact that many 
of their pupils pay fees has enabled the secondary schools to carry on their work 
with less public aid than would otherwise have been necessary, and more public 
money has thus been made available for maintenance allowances. Thus through 
the rapid extension of the scholarship system, which links together schools of 
different types under the general supervision of public authority, much has been 
done within the last five years to construct a framework of national education. 
The five chief branches of the English scholarship system are: (1) Scholarships 
tenable at universities or other places of advanced education; (2) scholarships 
tenable at the great secondary boarding-schools (‘Public Schools’); (8) junior 
scholarships from the public elementary schools to the secondary day schools ; 
(4) intermediate scholarships enabling pupils to prolong their secondary education ; 
(5) scholarships tenable at evening schools and classes. 
The new regulations for the payment of Government grants to secondary 
schools may greatly affect the present situation. But the scholarship system has 
at any rate served as a useful expedient in a time of rapid social change. There 
is some reason to think that the offer of junior scholarships has been too profuse. 
Improvements in the elementary and secondary schools themselves are far more 
important than an indefinite increase of facilities for the transference of children 
from the one to the other. 
The following have been the chief results of the working ot the scholarship 
system as it has developed in England during recent years :— 
(1) The scholarship system has made the English universities, old and new, 
the educational goal of hundreds of students of good ability who under former 
conditions would have been shut out fronr academic studies, 
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