ON THE INFLUENCE OF EXAMINATIONS. 365 
authorities especially which aid the schools and may perhaps pay the 
examination fees may be glad to be associated with a neighbouring 
University. There is further a growing body of public opinion in favour 
of associating the teachers in the schools with duties of this kind. 
No general rule can be laid down requiring a school to be examined 
by a particular examining body. It may often be desirable that a school 
should be examined by the University or Board of the district in which 
it is situate. On the other hand a school may prefer to preserve or to 
create a connection with one of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, or 
London. It is recognised that it would not be desirable, if it were 
possible, to disregard the non-local character of these Universities, or 
the position which their examinations occupy all over the country. The 
proposals are based on the assumption that it will ultimately be best for 
the secondary schools which are maintained or largely aided by local 
authorities to look to provincial examining bodies for the organisation of 
their examinations, and it is not improbable that local authorities may 
prefer their doing so ; but in any case there will be a period of transition 
during which the new system and the existing University examinations 
will run side by side for all classes of schools, and the higher secondary 
schools will doubtless always retain complete liberty in the choice of their 
examining body. 
(4) That recognition of these examining bodies should mean recogni- 
tion by the Board of Education, acting on the advice of the Consultative 
Committee. 
(5) That the following conditions should be required from schools 
which present candidates for school certificates :— 
(a) Periodical Inspection. Whether this inspection be conducted by 
officers of the Board of Education, or by a University or other organisa- 
tion recognised under Section 3 of the Board of Education Act, 1899, the 
report of the inspection should be communicated to the examining body. 
(6) The communication of the course of studies pursued in the school 
to the examining body. 
That an examining body should be at liberty to decline to examine 
a school if the result of the inspection has not been, in their opinion, 
satisfactory ; or if the course of studies is such as they are not able to 
approve. 
It is considered that in this connection inspection and examination 
should be treated as complementary one to ths other. Inspection is 
required, in the first place to enable the examining body to judge whether 
a school is fitted to be admitted to the benefits of the system ; but it 
is also required to enable the examiners to understand the aims and 
characters of the different schools, and so, on the one hand, to prevent the 
examination from becoming mechanical and rigid, and on the other to 
check any tendency in the school to direct its efforts too exclusively to 
success in the examination. 
(6) That a Central.Board should be established for England (excluding, 
for the present, Wales and Monmouth), consisting of representatives from 
the Board of Education and from the different examining bodies, whose 
duty should be to co-ordinate and control the standards of these exami- 
nations, to secure the interchangeability of certificates, and to consider 
