446 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 



academic type. The second is the related fact that a curriculum planned 

 to lead up to the examination often seems to a pupil to have little or no 

 connection with the needs of any occupation he is likely to follow ; and 

 in many secondary schools the number of the pupils whose school work is 

 affected adversely by this kind of observation is very considerable. 

 Their silent discontent deserves attention not only on its own account, but 

 also because it corresponds with a suspicion among parents, employers, 

 and those engaged in public administration that secondary schools have 

 not yet adjusted themselves to the immense social, economic, industrial 

 and scientific developments of recent years ; in other words, that although 

 they now draw their pupils from a wide area of the adolescent population 

 they still cling to the academic paths that lead directly only to the 

 university and the more learned professions. 



These considerations and criticisms point to important modifications 

 of the way in which the First School Examination is administered. It is 

 true that provision is sometimes made whereby a school may substitute 

 its own syllabus in a particular subject for the syllabus prescribed in the 

 regulations ; but that amount of concession to the basic principle is 

 insufficient. It does not go far enough to permit a radical change in the 

 atmosphere of the curriculum, and above all it does not in practice secure 

 to schools the freedom to work out curricula adjusted to the needs of 

 industry and other departments of practical life. The examination system 

 has now acquired such a masterful position in our educational world that 

 what it does not encourage it tends in efiect to frustrate. In place, then, 

 of a system which is, in essence, external, though it admits the internal 

 element here and there, we must hope to see installed a system based 

 upon the principle that examinations are to be adapted to teaching, yet 

 designed in such a way as to include the guarantees which the external 

 system offers to parents, employers and the administrative authorities. 



For the purposes of the award of National Certificates such a system 

 of examination has already been for some years in operation in the case 

 of technical schools. For example, a National Certificate is awarded 

 under the joint supervision of the Board of Education and the Institution 

 of Mechanical Engineers. The regulations (issued as ' Rules 106 ' of the 

 Board) provide that courses of instruction shall be submitted by the 

 schools for approval, that the equipment and staff shall also be accepted 

 as satisfactory, and that, when these conditions are complied with, 

 the students of the schools shall be examined by their own teachers in 

 association with assessors appointed by the Institution. The assessors 

 form a Board which has the duty not of imposing uniformity upon the 

 several examinations but of maintaining a common standard which 

 would justify the award of a National Certificate to a candidate successful 

 in any one of them. For this purpose it has the right to substitute a 

 certain proportion of questions for those proposed by the teachers in a 

 school, and of making certain questions compulsory. A similar scheme 

 has been adopted by the University of London for the examination of 

 the twenty-two training colleges allocated to it, the aim being, in this 

 case also, to allow the maximum amount of liberty in teaching while 

 preserving a guarantee of standard. 



The methods initiated in these cases would seem capable of being adapted 



