182 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1917. 
VI. SCHEME OF SCIENCE WORK IN A PUBLIC SECONDARY 
SCHOOL FOR GIRLS. 
By Livan J. Crarxe, Senior Science Mistress, James Allen’s Girls’ School, 
Dulwich. 
The following scheme of science work has been thought out and adopted in 
a large secondary school for girls, but it is not put forward as one to be 
followed by all. Each teacher must herself decide what is best suited to the 
special conditions of the school in which she works. The school in which this 
scheme is followed is an endowed day school containing nearly 400 girls, who 
are allowed to enter at the age of seven, and may stay until they are nineteen. 
Special permission is needed for girls to remain after they reach the age of 
nineteen. 
Post-matriculation work in botany and chemistry is taken by some girls, 
but details of the general or pre-matriculation science course only are here given. 
For many reasons great value is attached to the study of botany; and botany 
is the science to which most time is given; it was felt, however, to be so 
essential that all girls should have some knowledge of physics and chemistry 
that half the time given to science in the three forms of the Middle School 
(two hours per week) is allotted to elementary physics and chemistry, and 
half to botany. Every girl who passes through the school studies elementary 
physics and chemistry for three years. 
In the classes above the Middle School, all the time allotted to science is 
given to botany, but lately a voluntary class has been arranged, so that girls 
wishing to continue the study of elementary physics and chemistry may do so 
on one afternoon a week. 
The aim throughout is for the work in both botany and chemistry to he 
thoroughly practical; the girls have, therefore, to make their own experiments. 
After experiments have been carried out the results obtained by each girl are 
received and tabulated and conclusions are then drawn from these results by the 
whole class. If some results are in opposition to the greater number they are 
carefully examined, and the girls themselves often suggest possible explanations 
of the discrepancies. 
: No text-books are used, but each girl in the Upper Forms possesses a small 
Flora. 
In the botany classes the plants are studied mainly as living things by 
means of observations and experiments. Drawings are made from actual 
specimens and experiments, and not from drawings on the blackboard. 
Microscopes are not used by girls taking the pre-specialisation science course, 
except in the highest classes, where the structure of a green cell, a stomate, and 
a leaf are studied, 
Great help has been derived in the study of botany from the botany 
gardens which have been gradually made in response to the needs of the 
botany teaching in the laboratory. As a rule two girls are responsible for a 
garden; and every year the girls change their gardens. The work in the 
botany gardens each year is determined by the nature of the work in the 
laboratory, and the indoor and out-of-door work are closely connected. So far 
as possible the girls choose the gardens for which they will be responsible. 
No time is allowed in the actual school hours for gardening (except in the 
case of a few girls responsible for vegetable gardens) : the girls look after their 
gardens in the mid-morning and mid-day recesses. The work is voluntary, but 
so many applications are received for botany gardens that the difficulty has 
been to provide gardens for all who wished to have them. 
The science work of the pre-specialisation period may be divided roughly into 
three stages, namely :— - 
Division I—The work in the younger forms, before a course of systematic 
science is begun. 
Division II.—The work in the Middle School, where definite courses of 
botany, and elementary physics and chemistry, are taken. 
