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REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 



at the common entrance examination, but this was dropped some years 

 ago, and now there is no direct paper in science and only a scientific 

 tendency in some of the mathematical questions, the geography paper 

 and, sometimes, an essay. That science does not at present take a very 

 formal place in preparatory schools is not, he says, due to lack of will on 

 the part of the headmasters, but really to a lack of time and suitable 

 teachers. He has reason to think that an increasing number are interested 

 in the matter and are introducing perhaps informal lessons into their 

 schools. 



3. The Kelation between the Supply of Teachers of Science and 

 THE Science Subjects Taught in the Schools. 



It is obvious that the science subjects taught in the schools give a bias 

 to the intending teacher and that the course taken by a student at the 

 university tends to decide the nature of the science teaching in the school 

 to which he or she goes as a teacher. In this connection the size of the 

 schools is worth consideration. It seems safe to say that where a school 

 contains 150 pupils or under the teaching of science will be in the hands 

 of one teacher, and that where that teacher is a one-subject specialist the 

 teaching will tend to be limited, particularly in the upper parts of the 

 school, to the subject in which specialisation has taken place. The 

 Statistics of Public Education show that of the 1,301 secondary schools 

 on the grant list in 1925-26, 629 contained 250 or under pupils. 445 con- 

 tained under 200. In 1926 it was found as a result of an exhaustive enquiry 

 into the supply of teachers made by the Joint Committee of the four 

 Secondary Associations that of 100 teachers offering science subjects, 

 38 offered chemistry, 23 physics, 12 botany, 15 science (kind not specified), 

 12 natural science. The relation of the demand for science teachers to 

 the general demand is shown by the fact that of 100 vacant posts in the 

 same year, 1926, 12-2 were for physics and chemistry, 11 for mathematics, 

 1-9 for botany, 0-9 for biology. While the teacher of biology is generally 

 competent to teach introductory physics and chemistry, the teachers of 

 these subjects are not as a rule either willing or competent to undertake 

 the teaching of biological science. In the course of the above-mentioned 

 enquiry returns were received from schools and the following table 

 shows the distribution of the study of science subjects among the pupils 

 in post-matriculation forms in 232 schools : — 



No figures are available at present in regard to the number of entrance 

 scholarships available at universities and the proportion of these allotted 

 to the different science subjects, but the following information relating 

 to State scholarships shows the same concentration on physics and 

 chemistry. 



1 Some schools gave the number of pupils studying science without indicating 

 the nature of the science in question. 



