L.— EDUCATION. 1 95 



without taking any certificate. In 1923, therefore, the Scottish Education 

 Department instituted ' advanced divisions,' as alternatives to the first 

 part of the purely secondary course, but under more exacting conditions 

 of staffing than the old supplementary departments. All courses must 

 have a ' common core ' of English subjects — these having the lion's share 

 of the time-table — training in morals and citizenship, mathematics (or, 

 for girls, arithmetic), art and music. At either end of the scale are a 

 number of alternative subjects, academic or practical. A foreign language 

 is not compulsory. A ' higher day school certificate ' is to be taken 

 at the end of the course — normally at the age of fifteen. A ' lower 

 day school certificate ' is given a year earlier. 



While, however, it is obvious from a recital of these facts that some 

 steps have been taken to meet the demand for a wider curriculum, the 

 position as we review it to-day can hardly be considered satisfactory. 

 Too often our aim appears to be to pass on as many children as possible 

 to the ordinary secondary school. Here the curriculum, however admirable 

 an instrument of all-round culture for boys and girls of scholastic ability, 

 if they remain at school until sixteen or later, may be quite unsuited to the 

 boy or girl of another type who will leave school at the age of fourteen or 

 fifteen. Though school life is appreciably lengthening, only one-half of the 

 pupils in secondary schools in England and Wales enter for the first schools 

 examination ; only one-third of the pupils pass. Moreover, the 

 Consultative Committee have expressed the opinion that schools or 

 departments of the practical or ' modern ' type are needed for the great 

 majority of the children in the country ; yet the number of children 

 receiving this type of post-primary instruction, though steadily increasing, 

 is only about one-third of the number in secondary schools. What are 

 the reasons for this comparative failure to supply what I venture to 

 suggest is the most pressing need of our education system as it exists 

 to-day ? 



One, I think, is to be found in the fact that most persons interested in 

 education have been educated mainly on academic lines, and therefore 

 have found it difficult to realise the need for practical instruction. This, 

 we are told, is why the efforts made many years ago by Sir James Kav- 

 Shuttleworth to increase the practical training in elementary schools 

 met with little success. At a later date the grant system was to blame. 

 ' Payment by results ' tended to restrict elementary education to the 

 three R's, and gave a serious set-back to manual training. 



Other reasons were the expense of the equipment, the comparative 

 failure of the technical instruction given prior to 1902, the tardy develop- 

 ment, outlined above, of the secondary curriculum, and the delay in 

 organising secondary education on a national basis. Matthew Arnold's 

 plea — first uttered in the 'fifties — that secondary education should be 

 organised on a national basis, had fallen on deaf ears. Wales obtained 

 powers for secondary education in 1889, but none were available in 

 England until the Act of 1902. The varying types of higher grade, 

 higher elementary and science schools, which in the years following 

 1870 were added to the schools of the old grammar school type, may well 

 have made it appear that the first task alike of the Board and of the new 

 authorities set up by the 1902 Act must be to develop a clearly defined 



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