852 REPORT—1904. 
authorities in the Principality, and the attempt was to be made to devise one 
scheme for the whole of Wales. It was most important that those who were 
training for the teaching profession should be associated with the students for 
other professions, and that the hard-and-fast division between primary and 
secondary teachers should be obliterated. 
Mr. Culverwell said that to make the training of teachers a national rather 
than a local concern would secure a more immediate supply of trained teachers. 
But he doubted whether the former would be as effective as the latter in the long 
run. People took much more care in expending their own than national money, 
and the most important of all reforms in education was to increase and sustain 
the interest of the parents in the school. Moreover, central control was apt to 
get into the hands of doctrinaires, and it was extremely hard to reform a Govern- 
ment department when once it got wrong. 
Mr. J. L. Holland drew attention to some of the dangers accompanying the 
administration of the new regulations for the training of pupil-teachers. The 
pupil teachers should not monopolise all the scholarships given in various areas. 
In some areas it was a fact that a clever pupil could not obtain a scholar- 
ship if he were not willing to become a teacher. The intending pupil-teachers 
should enter the secondary schools at twelve, and not at fourteen years of age, as 
some people, misreading the regulations, seemed to imagine. The proportion of 
intending pupil teachers in any one school should not be large. To found 
schools, as was being done in some places, entirely for the sake of their pupil- 
teachers would defeat the real object of the new regulations. 
Sir John Gorst said that the question was how to increase the supply of 
competent teachers. That supply had been short before the Act of 1902 was 
passed, and it was much shorter now. The passing of an Act of Parliament did 
not create a body of teachers. It was most ridiculous to decide before the student 
was trained whether he was to be an elementary, a secondary, or a technical 
teacher, and he objected fundamentally to this attempt to divide education into 
these three watertight compartments. To suppose that anyone could be com- 
petent for one kind of teaching without any knowledge of the other kinds was a 
delusion. No doubt the supply of head-masters of public schools could be left to 
take care of itself; but to increase the great body of teachers it would be neces- 
sary to draw on a class which could not afford the necessary training without 
State help. There was no difficulty in obtaining teachers in Ireland. Why not 
recruit the teaching staff from that country? The system of training teachers 
which had hitherto obtained had been a disastrous failure, and a revolution was 
necessary. The burden laid on the young pupil-teacher was greater than any- 
one could bear, and he was never more indignant than when he heard Sir William 
Anson, in the House of Commons, reading out the ridiculous answers which pupil- 
teachers had given in examinations. Such answers were the exact result to be 
expected from the system now pursued. Assistance for the training of teachers 
must be given both from Imperial and from local funds; but he was opposed to 
the old-fashioned training college, where students for the teaching profession 
were completely isolated. The whole training of the teachers could be supplied 
in such existing educational institutions as the county schools and the univer- 
sities, if the Government gave adequate grants. The qualification of the teacher 
should be certified to by the university, and not by a Government department, 
and invidious distinctions between one class of teachers and another should be 
avoided. Then the profession of teaching might offer an honourable career. 
Mr. Oscar Browning: One of the worst enemies of the training of teachers is 
to be found in the curricula which are from time to time sent to us by the Board 
of Education. Whenever it occurs to anyone that some subject ought to be 
taught in the elementary schools, an attempt is made to force it upon the teachers 
who are in training and to make it part of the training-college course. Surely it 
is only important that the teacher should be a well-educated man, and it may 
fairly be claimed that the University Training Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge 
have fulfilled this end. The Cambridge College has now been at work for twelve 
years—only two years less than the limit given by a previous speaker to the 
