448 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 



and the correlation of the training preliminary thereto and to specialised 

 study in the various professional groups. Attention should be drawn to 

 the absence of any representation of industry, commerce, art or music on 

 the Secondary School Examinations Council, which is charged with the 

 duty of equating the standards of the various examinations. This Council, 

 however, does not appear to have the duty or the power to consider the 

 broader questions of the influence of the examinations on the schools or 

 the after-careers of the students. A broadening of the functions of the 

 Council and also of its constitution appears to be desirable. 



2. Training of Science Teachers. 



The following brief statement of the facilities for the training of 

 science teachers is based on inquiries made by the committee at 

 universities, at university college training departments, and at other 

 training colleges offering post-graduate courses in England — twenty-five 

 institutions in all. 



Many training colleges do not now distinguish very clearly between 

 training for elementary school teaching, and that for secondary school 

 teaching. Indeed, the Board of Education Regulations for the Training 

 of Teachers now make no distinction between training for primary and 

 for secondary school work. But it is substantially correct to say that the 

 course offered by the various training colleges to men and women who 

 wish to become science teachers in secondary schools is a one-year course 

 of professional training open only to those who have already completed 

 a university science degree course. These post-graduate courses are 

 provided in all the training departments to which inquiries were addressed. 

 The qualifications, therefore, of the teachers trained in the great majority 

 of training colleges where the post-graduate course is not provided do not 

 aft'ect the position of science in schools concerned with the First School 

 Certificate Examination — except indirectly through the elementary 

 education of the boys and girls who pass on from the elementary school 

 to the secondary. 



/. The One- Year Post-Graduate Professional Course. 



Men and women who intend to teach science in secondary schools 

 usually take a science degree course (extending over three or four years) 

 in a university. The Board of Education's Report of 1925 on the con- 

 ditions affecting the teaching of science in secondary schools for boys in 

 England contains (page 7) a criticism of the character of the university 

 degree courses considered with reference to their influence on the qualifica- 

 tions of teachers of science in schools and to the need emphasised by the 

 Prime Minister's Committee for science teachers ' with a wider outlook.' 

 The report of 1925 partly attributes to the specialised character of the 

 degree courses the fact that very little has been done to give effect in the 

 schools to the recommendations of the Prime Minister's Committee 

 (1916-1918) that elementary teaching of biology should be a part of the 

 normal curriculum in boys" schools and that courses on scientific subjects 

 or aspects of science other than those dealt with in the normal course 



