708 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
(2) Many boys and some girls of exceptional ability have been helped 
forward to high academic distinction. 
(3) A large number of boys and girls from public elementary schools have 
been enabled by means of scholarships to obtain access to secondary schools. 
This has been especially the case during the last five years, in consequence of the 
operation of the Education Act, 1902, and the requirements of the new regula- 
tions for the training of pupil-teachers. 
(4) In some cases the provision of junior scholarships of small value has been 
in excess of the needs of.the situation. With this has occasionally gone a 
tendency to fail in giving sufficiently prolonged or ample help to the handful of 
pupils who show very marked ability or promise. To secure for large numbers 
of children of average powers a somewhat longer education than they would 
otherwise have received is an excellent object, if the education so given is appro- 
priate to the children’s needs. But a scholarship system may in the long ren 
prove socially deleterious if it gives brief but widespread encouragement to 
merely average ability without at the same time taking special pains to secure 
the opportunity of long and thorough training for carefully selected individuals 
of unusual capacity. And a scholarship system is economically vicious if it 
imposes a disproportionate share of the burden of taxation upon cultivated 
families with slender incomes without at the same time providing for such families 
educational opportunities of an intellectual quality appropriate to their needs. 
(5) To a limited extent scholarships have bridged over the gulf between 
lower and higher secondary education, a gulf which im England is social as well 
as intellectual. 
(6) The scholarship system has virtually failed to span the gap between the 
public elementary schools and the great Public (boarding) Schools. The latter 
are mainly fed from a special type of preparatory school. But many clever 
boys whose parents can give them the intellectual preparation afforded by such 
preparatory schools are enabled by scholarships to obtain a Public School education 
at a greatly reduced cost. And it appears that, in the majority of cases, these 
boys could not be sent to Public Schools of this kind without such pecuniary help. 
(7) A lopsided development has recently been given to the scholarship 
system through the administrative need of securing large numbers of recruits 
(chiefly girls) for the elementary school teaching profession. Apart from this, the 
claims of girls are still less liberally recognised than those of boys. 
(8) The records kept of the later careers of scholarship-holders are at present 
inadequate. Such evidence as is forthcoming points to the conclusion that an 
overwhelming majority pass into literary, clerical, and other non-industrial callings. 
This would suggest that the scholarship system as at present organised fails to 
select and reward a due proportion of boys and girls whose abilities are practical 
and constructive rather than literary or purely scientific. 
(9) A chief motive in the English scholarship system has been the benevolent 
desire to give every clever boy (and, more recently, clever girls) a chance of indi- 
vidual advancement through higher education. But less thought seems to have 
been given to the practical question, What kind of secondary and higher educa- 
tion is best suited to the special aptitudes of each individual scholarship-winner ? 
As the dominant tradition in the older form of secondary education for boys has 
been fixed by the requirements of literary callings, many of the secondary schools 
which are justly held in high esteem are not necessarily in a position to give the 
most suitable training to all the pupils for whom a slightly prolonged education 
is now desired. The experience gained through the working of the present 
scholarship system is revealing the lack of adjustment between some traditional 
courses of study and the intellectual and social needs of modern life. To remedy 
this defect new types of secondary school curriculum are needed. 
(10) The scholarship question should be looked at from a national point of 
view, not only from the standpoint of the personal advantage and preferment of 
the individual scholar. The fundamental purpose of a scholarship system in all 
its grades and branches is the direction of ability towards those callings in which 
the individual scholars are best qualified, by natural aptitude and by physical 
