be rendered more efficient by the united funds and combined efforts of four or five Unions.

You will report on such combinations as may suggest themselves to you, in order that they may be brought under the consideration of the Poor Law Commissioners.

The letter of the Poor Law Commissioners to the Chaplain of the Norwood Schools of Industry, conveying their view of the mode in which his spiritual instructions might most effectually promote the education of such children, deserves your attentive perusal.

Before this letter was issued, it was submitted to the Bishops of London and Winchester, and approved by them; it may therefore be regarded as having authority, and the experience of several years now confirms the wisdom of its suggestions. If this letter be not in the hands of the chaplains of the Unions which you visit, it may be well to introduce it to their consideration.

The volumes of the Reports on the training of pauper children, and those more recently published in the "Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education," respecting the Schools of Industry at Norwood, Liverpool, and Manchester, contain an account of the plans which have been pursued in such schools.

One of the first things to be done in a workhouse school is to devise proper employments for the scholars, suited to develop their strength, and to prepare them for a course of honest industry.

It is not within the scope of this letter to give more than very general indications. In rural workhouses no labour is more suitable than that of a garden. Tile and brick-making, with stout and hardy boys, would tend to rear them in vigour and in habits suited to field-work. Such employments as can be pursued in the open air are always to be preferred for the young.

It is therefore to be hoped that the pauper children may soon be withdrawn from the workhouses in towns and great

cities.

If the garden be the chief employment for the boys, the mode of cultivating it would afford ample subjects for instruction in the school.

In seaports the school might be kept in a ship moored in the harbour, like that of the Marine Society on the Thames, so that the boys should be accustomed to those employments which would prepare them for the enterprise of a sailor's life.

The workhouses of great cities and of densely-peopled manufacturing districts afford the least healthful means of employment. If some manual craft must be followed within doors, that should be preferred which is best adapted to develop the strength, and which most exercises the mind in contrivance.

A child should not for misfortune be condemned to some mean mechanical drudgery, such as sorting hair or bristles, or picking oakum; such work as heading pins, or making hooks-and-eyes, or chopping billets, is too easily learned, is too monotonous, and does nothing, beyond promoting docility in continuous labour, to prepare him for his after-life. For in-door employment in towns, and for winter work in the country, coopering, basketmaking, tinman's and blacksmith's work, carpentry, and printing, are preferable to tailoring and shoemaking, which are now commonly resorted to, because more easily taught, and of more immediate use in the establishment. In-door work should alternate, especially in town workhouse-schools, with some out-door relaxation, in which the children should be allowed all natural freedom while attended by the schoolmaster.

To the girls, under proper arrangements, the workhouse affords ample opportunities for instruction in cutting out clothes, in sewing, knitting, and mending, in washing and all laundry work, in cooking and kitchen labour, and in all the services of a housemaid. Such instruction may be combined with lessons in the school on cottage economy. Care however should be taken that this work is done under the eye of servants of good moral character, and that the children do not associate with the paupers of the workhouse.

A practical connexion should be established between these employments and the instruction of the boys and girls in their schoolrooms.

Too little importance is attached in schools to the period at which children are taught to write. The art of writing a small hand neatly and quickly should accompany or precede fluency of reading.

If the early acquirement of this art be kept in view in workhouse schools, you will place in the hands of the scholars and masters one of the chief instruments of instruction.

Lessons in dictation, in writing abstracts from memory, in letter-writing, prepare the scholars for keeping accounts of domestic, or garden, or other work, and thus furnish the most practical link between the labour and the lessons of the school.

A class-book on cottage economy and garden culture is required for the success of schools of industry; and my Lords regret that they cannot refer you to any such book.

It will be your duty to procure from the Board of Guardians, as a condition of the grant of salary to the teachers, a wellordered arrangement of desks and benches, and a sufficient supply of the lesson-books for the use of the school.

Your visit to a workhouse school should, if possible, be made to correspond with the day of meeting of the Board of Guardians; and you should at all events give notice of your intended visit at least one week previously, in the forms provided for

that purpose, to the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Board, to the Chaplain, and also to the Clerk of the Union, requesting him to inform the members of the School Committee.

Your examination of the school will be most useful when conducted before the Chaplain and School Committee, and such other members of the Board of Guardians as may be disposed to be present.

From the patient and systematic examination of the condition of the school before those responsible for its efficiency, much advantage arises. The exertions of a meritorious master are thus made known, which were before obscure; and partial or general defects become obvious which would otherwise be disputed. The demonstration of the condition of the schools should be as complete as possible, otherwise your suggestions must necessarily rest upon the unstable foundation of defective impressions or divided opinions.

The Chaplain, School Committee, and other guardians, being present at this examination, you would have an opportunity, in conference with them, of explaining the plans which it will be your duty to suggest, to render the preparation of the children for a life of industry as effectual as possible.

The resolutions adopted at this conference should be entered in the minutes of the School Committee, in order that they may be reported to the Board of Guardians.

It is also expedient that your opinion on the condition of the school, and also your suggestions, unless embodied in these resolutions, should be communicated to the Board of Guardians.

Whenever the workhouse school is large, and the schoolmaster efficient, it is desirable that the Guardians should apprentice one or more of the most proficient and best conducted of the boys and girls to themselves, as assistants to the master and mistress, on conditions similar to those set forth in the regulations of the Committee of Council respecting the apprenticeship and training of pupil-teachers. The Guardians should on their part engage to clothe, board, and educate the apprentice.

The Committee of Council are prepared to promote this apprenticeship by granting half the stipends to the apprentices, to be reserved as a fund for their education in a training school, and the entire gratuities to the master, which are set forth in their Minutes for August and December 1846.

(Signed)

I have the honor to be, &c.,

J. P. KAY SHUTTLEWORTII.

To Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools of Parochial Unions.

Copy of Letter dated March 31, 1848, addressed, by order of the Poor Law Board, to the Clerks of the several Boards of Guar dians in England and Wales, relating to the Administration of the Grant for the Salaries of Teachers of Schools of Parochial Unions.

SIR,

Poor Law Board, Somerset House, March 31, 1848.

THE Poor Law Board desire to bring under the consideration of the Board of Guardians the subject of the Grant voted by Parliament for the Salaries of the Teachers of Workhouse Schools.

When the question of this Grant was first submitted to Parliament in the early part of 1846, it was stated by Sir Robert Peel, on the part of Her Majesty's Government, that the Grant should be employed as a means for the improvement of this class of schools; and the Poor Law Board feel it to be their duty to do whatever lies in their power to secure the fulfilment of this object.

The whole of the Salaries of the Schoolmasters and Schoolmistresses of Workhouses became charged on this Fund from the 1st of October, 1846; since which time Masters and Mistresses have, in several instances, been appointed where no such officers existed previously; and in other cases inefficient officers have been superseded by persons who had been trained and fitted for their duties. No comprehensive effort has however hitherto been made, to introduce any system for raising the general standard of the qualifications of this class of officers.

The proper education and training of children in the workhouses is essential to the improvement of their condition, as well as highly important with reference to the social condition of the Working Classes generally; and the increasing of the efficiency of Workhouse Schools must therefore always be an object of much solicitude with this Board.

The subject of the Workhouse Schools has also occupied the attention of the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education, as well as the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury.

From the Lords of the Committee of Council on Education, the Board have received a communication, of which the following is an extract.

"That during the year 1848 the Inspectors of Schools be instructed to examine the qualifications of the Teachers of Workhouse Schools. "That the Board of Guardians be, during this year, informed what are the qualifications of these Teachers, and the certificate and salary which, in the year 1849, would thus be awarded to them if their qualifications remained unchanged.

"That in the year 1849 every Teacher be again examined for a certificate; and that the salaries granted in that year be in each case

determined by the certificate attained by the Teacher, and the extent of his duties, as follows.

"To a Schoolmaster holding—

"A Certificate of permission, granted for one year, a Salary of from 51. to 15l. be granted;

a Certificate of probation, granted for one year, a Salary of from 157. to 30%.;

a Certificate of competency, a Salary of from 307. to 407;

"a Certificate of efficiency, a Salary of from 40l. to 50l., and

upwards.

"That salaries of two-thirds of these sums be granted to schoolmistresses holding these certificates respectively.

That, as certain of the masters now holding office may be unable to obtain certificates entitling them to their present salaries, the Poor Law Commissioners be recommended to permit the Guardians to provide for one year the difference (between the grant awarded and the salary voted) from the rates of the Union.

"That the certificates he determined by the Committee of Council on Education, on the report and examination papers submitted by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools; and that the decision be communicated from time to time to the Poor Law Commissioners, who will inform the Lords of the Treasury.

"That it be recommended to the Poor Law Commission to issue regulations to every Board of Guardians, requiring, as conditions of these grants, that convenient and respectably furnished apartments be provided for the Teachers in workhouses; that they be supplied with rations the same in kind and quantity as the master of the workhouse; that they be subjected to no menial offices; that they have proper assistance in the management of the children when not in school, so that they may have time for exercise and for the education of their pupilteachers; and otherwise defining their duties and privileges; and that the Secretary be directed to communicate with the Poor Law Commission on these subjects.

"Their Lordships had further under consideration the expediency of encouraging Teachers who obtain certificates of competency and efficiency, by permitting, under the Minutes of August and December 1846, certain of their scholars to be apprenticed to them, and by allowing them the annual gratuities granted in those Minutes for the instruction of their apprentices; and their Lordships resolved

"That one-half the above stipends of Pupil-teachers, and the entire gratuities to the Teacher for the successful education of apprentices, be granted to teachers of workhouse schools holding certificates of competency or efficiency, on condition that the stipend of the pupil-teacher be reserved by the Committee of Council to form a fund, which shall be given to him on his leaving the workhouse, if he successfully complete his apprenticeship, in order to provide for his further education in any training-school which he may enter with their Lordships' approbation."

From the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury the Board have also received a communication in reference to this matter, of which the following is an extract.

"If any parishes not under your control and superintendence desire