SCIENCE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS. 129 
TaBLeE I. 
Usual science subjects in schools where the leaving age is sixteen. 
Average Ages. 
Baleets 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 
Nature Study 
Elementary Physical Mea- } —— 
surements aa ab 
Elementary Heat pet 
Mechanics . . . . =... 
Heat and Light . 0 net 
Electricity —_ 
Elementary Chemistry _——| 
Systematic Chemistry . — 
Subject taught in a few schools 
majority of schools, 
” 2? 39 
nearly all schools 
”? ” 29 
There is a tendency to begin electricity earlier than the last year, 
but otherwise the subjects remain in much the same position as they 
were in 1908. Biology does not appear in the Table except as nature 
study, and it is studied only by a few boys specialising after matricula- 
tion. Physics and chemistry practically monopolise the field ; geology, 
natural history, archeology, and astronomy depending upon the boys’ 
voluntary efforts, encouraged by school scientific or natural history 
societies. 
As regards subjects of instruction, there is a wide difference between 
boys’ and girls’ schools. In many girls’ schools botany is the main 
science subject; physics, or more often chemistry, is taken in others 
as an alternative or in addition to botany. In some girls’ schools 
physics and chemistry are taught on the same lines as in boys’; 
in others, these subjects are used as introductions to a course of 
domestic science and hygiene or of botany. A course of experimental 
science which embodies rudiments of both physics and chemistry 
sométimes precedes formal teaching of these separate branches of 
science both in boys’ and girls’ schools, and may be carried through 
the curricula. 
(b) Boys’ Secondary Schools of the Public School Type. 
Rather more than eighty of the schools represented on the Head- 
masters’ Conference receive no grants from the Board of Educstion, 
1917, K 
