444 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 



separate divisions of science, any one of whicli may be included in the 

 curriculum, for the purposes of the First Examination, but it can scarcely 

 be suggested that a single subject of this kind represents what should be 

 science for all in a general education, or is likely to inspire wide interest 

 in the realm of Nature or in everyday aspects of scientific knowledge 

 and use. 



It was to obtain particulars as to the actual position of science in School 

 Certificate Examinations, as indicated by the subjects in which candidates 

 presented themselves, and with special reference to the desirability of a 

 general science course for pupils who do not propose to proceed to 

 Universities or specialise in science, that this Committee was appointed. 

 The statistics included in this Report represent the relative attention given 

 to various scientific subjects in secondary schools, and it will be seen that 

 these are almost entirely certain branches of physics, or chemistry or 

 botany. General science occupies a low place in comparison, and biological 

 subjects other than botany are deplorably neglected. The Committee 

 hopes that this survey will serve to direct attention to the present un- 

 satisfactory condition of things in regard to these subjects, and that efforts 

 will be made by both school and examining authorities to widen the 

 scope of science teaching and bring it in closer contact with living things 

 as well as with the many natural phenomena of our changeful earth and 

 man's relation to them. 



1. School Certificate Examinations. 



First School Examination. 



The most important purposes of a school examination are two : (i) to 

 ascertain and record the progress and attainments of individual pupils, 

 and (ii) to test (so far as a direct test is applicable) the quality of the 

 instruction given in the several subjects included in the school's curriculum. 

 This statement applies equally to domestic examinations conducted 

 entirely by the head and assistant teachers in a school and to examinations 

 conducted or supervised by an external authority. An examination of 

 the latter kind may fulfil other important purposes : (iii) the degree of 

 success attained in it by an individual examinee may serve as an index of 

 ability and attainments, useful both as a guarantee of suitability for 

 certain types of employment and as a test of fitness for further education, 

 academic or professional ; (iv) the performance in the examination of the 

 pupils as a whole may afford some measure of the confidence which parents 

 and the educational authorities may rightly feel in the soundness of the 

 aims and work of a school, and (v) the syllabuses prescribed for the 

 examination, presumably by experts whose views are authoritative, may 

 have a valuable influence upon the school's curricula and methods of 

 teaching. The last-mentioned point is the one to be taken up in this 

 section of our report. 



There is no question that during the latter part of the nineteenth 

 century, public examinations — of which those of the College of Preceptors, 

 the Local Examinations of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the 

 London Matriculation Examination, and the examinations of the Science 



