232 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



to be able to reap the full benefit of the Public School system ; that it. 

 is not solely a question of the fees charged is proved by the fact that 

 of the 101 schools represented upon the Headmasters' Conference no 

 fewer than thirty are in receipt of Government grants. 



Circulars were sent to about thirty-five schools represented upon 

 the Headmasters' Conference, the selection being made to include 

 about equal numbers of the larger and smaller schools. Questions 

 were asked as to the number of boys at present in the school who had 

 passed the various university examinations, and what they were then 

 reading ; also whether in the general opinion of the masters in the 

 school it was advisable for boys who had passed a university exami- 

 nation to spend the remainder of their school life in reading the subject 

 they would study at the university if that subject was (a) classics, 

 (b) mathematics, (c) science, (d) history. 



Since the especial aim of the Public Schools is to develop the sense 

 of responsibility and the power of command in their boys, and these 

 can only be acquired by the older pupils, there is a unanimous feeling 

 on the part of the masters in such schools that nothing should be done 

 to discourage the boys from remaining at school until they are eighteen 

 or nineteen years of age; if, however, they are to do this it follows that 

 unless boys entering the Public Schools are less able than those who 

 join the grammar schools (and of this there is no evidence), the various 

 subjects taught can, and must, be carried to a more advanced stage 

 in the former than in the latter. In other words, there must be a 

 certain amount of overlapping between the subjects taught in the Public 

 Schools and in those universities which draw their undergraduates 

 chiefly from schools in which the average leaving age is sixteen. 



The tutorial system at Oxford and Cambridge prevents any of the 

 undergraduates from being obliged to attend lectures unsuited to their 

 requirements ; those who begin the study of a new subject, e.g. , science, 

 are able to attend the lectures given to pass-men ; while those who go 

 up with a certain amount of groundwork already covered are advised 

 by their tutors which lectures can be omitted with advantage. On the 

 other hand, there seems to be no adequate tutorial system in force at 

 most of the colleges of the London University, and frequent complaints 

 are received at the Public Schools from the old boys that they are 

 obliged to waste the greater part of their first year in going over work 

 they have thoroughly mastered at school : this chiefly affects those boys 

 who have spent a year at school after passing the Matriculation exami- 

 nation but have not succeeded in reaching the standard of the Inter- 

 mediate B.A. or B.Sc. ; it certainly seems to be desirable that there 

 should not be so sharp a distinction drawn by the London colleges 

 between their first and second year courses, and that those who are 

 able to do so with advantage should be allowed to attend second-year 

 lectures, even if they have not passed the Intermediate examination. 



All the schools to which circulars were sent, with the single excep- 

 tion of the City of London School, reply that in their opinion boys who 

 have passed some examination in general education should be allowed 

 to spend the greater part of their remaining school life in working at 



