Board's Circular of the 6th of May 1850, to be of the same a mistress has been reckoned, pursuant to the Poor Law In the foregoing table, the value of lodgings and rations for

value as for a master.

actual operation of the Poor Law Board's Circular. I beg leave to request attention to the three following tables.

2. The foregoing analysis gives a very inadequate idea of the

Having an average attendance of 100 children and upwards
Having less than 100 and more than 75
Having less than 75 and more than 50
Under 50

It thus appears that the number of workhouse schools in which the maximum salary attached even to the lowest grade of a master's efficiency certificate can be obtained are less than 7 per cent. on the total number of those inspected in the course of last year; and this result has its counterpart in the fact that only 91 per cent. of the whole number of masters, and barely more than 2 per cent. of the whole number of mistresses, employed in those same schools hold efficiency certificates.

The inequality of emoluments between the workhouse teachers and the rest of the profession might be stated far more strongly than would appear from the foregoing tables. For the minimum salaries required in common day schools are far from being the minimum salaries which teachers in those schools practically command; while the maximum salaries of workhouse teachers have been shown to be rarely attainable under the conditions to which they are subjected.

Teachers in common elementary day schools holding first-class certificates from Committee of Council.

actually existing in the past year.

The following table is calculated from the state of facts

It is notorious to all persons in any degree acquainted with the state of opinion among elementary schoolmasters, or among candidates for that office, that workhouse schools are regarded by them with the utmost dislike. The workhouse schoolmaster has in any case to make great sacrifices. He has no assured vacations; his personal liberty is abridged, in comparison with other members of his profession, by the necessary rules of a workhouse; he is subordinate to, and dependent for his comfort upon, persons who are frequently less cultivated than himself; he has a less promising class of children to deal with; he has more to do for them. And if, in addition to all these drawbacks, his emoluments, as is now the case, are liable to fluctuate from causes over which he has no control, and are also disproportionately less than those obtainable by the superior members of his profession elsewhere, it may happen indeed occasionally that the spirit of self-sacrifice will retain a good master at the work; but, in the great majority of instances, such masters will be deterred from entering upon it, or will be driven away.

It is unnecessary to repeat that the unfavourable circumstances which surround a pauper child, including not unfrequently a deteriorated organization, cannot be counteracted through education unless its remedies are skilfully and vigorously applied. The schoolmaster is part only of the education which the poorest child of independent parents receives; he is everything to the workhouse child.

The Poor Law Board's Circular of the 6th of May 1850 was framed to meet certain anomalies which were found to arise from the employment of highly salaried (because highly qualified) teachers in small workhouse schools. In the correspondence between this office and the Poor Law Board which preceded the issuing of that circular, it was urgently represented that the true remedy was to be sought in a more equal distribution of the children among fewer schools, according to the intention of the legislature as declared in the Acts 7 & 8 Vict., cap. 101, and 11 & 12 Vict., cap. 82, and that the present plan would operate in the discouraging manner which is now found to be the result of it.

The salary proposed by the Guardians on engaging a teacher is, for the most part, calculated at a very low rate, in order that it may always fall within the amount declared to be reimbursable on the reports of Her Majesty's Inspectors. The sum so reimbursable has in effect become the salary of each workhouse teacher.

With a view to remove some of the foregoing objections, and bearing in mind the very large undistributed balance remaining over from the successive Parliamentary grants for