846 
PROCEEDINGS OE SECTION J. 
livelihood at thirteen years of age. For the next ten years they may 
win by prizes in money as much income as the pay of a subaltern in 
the British army. # Their whole subsequent career is determined by 
early successes. This is a fact in the consideration of the subject to 
inspire grave reflections, for it is really the key of the whole 
situation. Hence a brief review of the rapid rise of the examination 
system is at this stage necessary. 
On the introduction of public examinations their influence on 
school education was at once alterative and prophylactic. It had 
for many years been the custom that anywhere within the British 
Empire a school might be set going by any man, whatever his 
qualifications. Private-adventure schools have been conducted in 
Great Britain in a way that leave an indelible impression upon our 
literature. According to Macaulay, in his day the owners and 
masters of these schools were frequently old soldiers, f footmen, 
broken-down publicans, and prize-fighters. They owed no duty to 
any council or governing body, but only to parents, of whom many 
would interest themselves in education only to obstruct it by mis- 
chievous interference or foolish indulgence. The better class of 
private schoolmasters used to issue reports which fell into hands 
either incapable of verifying them or not unwilling to be misled. Such 
schools were nothing better than cheap lodging- bouses for children, 
and not unseldom mere baby farms.J On this class of school the 
public examinations introduced by the College of Preceptors, and 
subsequently by Oxford and Cambridge, acted with remarkable results. 
“ For when one school in a neighbourhood began to send in its 
boys for these examinations it was not unnatural that the parents of 
pupils at other schools of like character should inquire why their 
children were not prepared for a similar test, and if the same state of 
things continued, or if excuses were made, the parents began to think 
there was something rotten in the state of a school which could not 
do what its neighbours did. Then, if, under pressure, boys were sent 
in it became most desirable, from the schoolmaster’s point of view, 
his boys should pass ; if they did not, or if another establishment in 
the neighbourhood was more successful, his school would be sure to 
suffer, hence the general improvement in work in many places was the 
result, and these examinations afforded something like a general test 
for schools of a certain class throughout the country, for which every 
school with any pretentions to efficiency had to enter. Thus the 
establishment of these examinations has been improving to such schools, 
and has stimulated the education given in them.”§ 
This initiative attracted the attention of Parliament, which passed 
an Endowed Schools Act for the improved control of endowed schools. 
In all schemes under this Act occurs a clause directing the examination 
* See Ck. Times, 14th September, 1894. A school advertises as having gained 
oB4,725 in scholarships alone ; another mentions that it has £700 to give away. 
f Inquiry into the state of education in Monmouthshire, 1839. Perhaps there 
is no literature in which schools play such a prominent part as in our own. See “David 
CopperfiekV’ “ Great Expectations,' 15 “ Our Mutual Friend," “Nicholas Nickleby,' 
“ Edwin Drood,” “ The Old Curiosity Shop,” “Jane Eyre,” “Adam Bede,” “ Eugene 
Aram,” “ Vanity Fair,” “ Pendennis,’' with many others. Blackmore’s latest novel 
adds “ Sergeant Jakes” to the long list. 
X Recent inquiries at Hackney show that even now Government institutions may 
be a only little better. 
§ R. B. Poole, D.D., I.C.E.,1884, vol. iv., p. 205. 
