128 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1917. 
TI. Posrrion oF ScrENCE TEACHING IN ScHOOLS OF DIFFERENT 'l'yPES. 
In considering the amount of time devoted to science teaching 3t 
is necessary to distinguish different types of secondary schools both 
for boys and girls. Schools in receipt of State aid are inspected by 
the Board of Education, and they include old-established Grammar 
Schools as well as Municipal and County Schools under Local Educa- 
tion Authorities. State-aided schools for boys number about 620, and 
the great majority of these are represented by the Incorporated Asso- 
ciation of Headmasters. In addition to these State-aided schools there 
are a number of public schools which are independent of the Board of 
Education or other public body. All these public schools are repre- 
sented upon the Headmasters’ Conference, together with about forty- 
five schools which are in receipt of State aid, and therefore come 
under the regulations of the Board of Education. One hundred and 
twenty schools are represented on the Conference, and the general 
condition of admission of a school to representation is that the school 
has at least 100 boys and about 10 per cent. of its pupils are resident 
undergraduates at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge direct 
from the school. The Association of Headmistresses represents in 
much the same way about 415 public secondary schools for girls, of 
which 330 are State-aided. 
On account of these distinctions the particulars as to science subjects 
studied in secondary schools are arranged under three heads—namely, 
(1) State-aided secondary schools for boys, (2) secondary schools with- 
out Government grant or control for bovs, (8) public secondary schools 
for girls. In the case of the first two types particulars presented by a 
Committee in 1908 have been brought up to date, but for the girls’ public 
schools a special inquiry has been instituted, the results of which are 
here described, and the details are given in Appendices IT. and IIT. :— 
(a) State-aided Secondary Schools. 
The Board of Education’s Regulations for Secondary Schools require 
that the curriculum of every such school in receipt of annual grants 
must make provision for instruction in science, and that this instruction 
“must include practical work by the pupils.’ 
In secondary schools for girls housecraft subjects may be substi- 
tuted partially or wholly for science and for mathematics other than 
arithmetic. 
About 1,000 secondary schools in England and Wales come under 
these Regulations, and the number of pupils in them is about 180,000. 
The leaving age is nominally sixteen or eighteen, but most of the 
pupils leave before they reach the lower age. In the majority of the 
schools earning the full grant of the Board of Education science occu- 
pies a prominent place in the curriculum, and the provision and equip- 
ment of laboratories are usually sufficient. 
Owing to the close agreement of the curriculum, the accompanying 
Table, from a report presented at the Dublin meeting of the Associa- 
tion in 1908, represents the range and sequence of subjects in the 
majority of boys’ schools. 
