B-time hands" are employed; in Congleton only 25; in Macclesfield

number varies from 100 to 350 (in October I found 227 attending the 7 National schools of the town). Thus it appears that in these three tons, in which thousands of children are employed in the silk manufacture, he law is sending to school on an average only 250.

The Inspectors of Factories, in their Reports, have frequently alluded to the need of amendment of this part of the law.

I find the following passage in the Report of Alexander Redgrave, Esq., for the half year ended the 31st of October 1852, which he has kindly allowed me to make use of :

"The uncertain and fluctuating nature of the attendance at school of children employed in factories is one of the principal causes which detracts from the amount of good the provisions of the Factory Act in regard to education were intended to confer. Another but minor cause (operating in some localities) arises from the selection by parents, whose choice is unrestricted, of an inferior inefficient school. Every child between 8 and 13 years of age must pass in school 3 hours of every day on which it is employed in a factory. The millowner cannot legally employ a child without having obtained certificates of its having attended school, and the parent is responsible if it be permitted to neglect school; but the law has imposed no condition and provided no security that anything shall have been learnt at school. The master must be able to teach, and have the materials for teaching reading and writing; but of the occupation of time in school and of its results the law takes no cognizance.

*

*

*

It is vain to expect any material improvement so long as this unsatisfactory system is permitted to last. The present qualification for the labour of youth is simply age and health; it is therefore the interest of the parent, in making out the right of his child to work for longer hours and to earn increased wages, to prove it to be older than it really is, and to lessen the period of its attendance at school, which thus becomes a burden upon the parent, who relieves himself from the irksome responsibility the instant he can. But if employment were made the reward of education; if a certain amount of acquired knowledge, or a certain number of years attendance at school, were made the qualifications for labour, an interest would at once be created in the right direction; the value of education would be appreciated by those who are now insensible to it; the punctual attendance at school, and the advancement of his child, would then be the objects of a parent's solicitude; and even though that anxiety were limited by the selfish advantages he would derive from his child's qualification for employment, the great moral duty of the parent would be performed, of securing to his child the important advantages of an uninterrupted and extended course of instruction."

The remedy for this unsatisfactory state of things appears to be very obvious; that a clause should be inserted in the Act requiring that all schools attended by factory children should be under the inspection of the Committee of Council on Education.

Postscript.-I have submitted these remarks to the Inspectors of Factories, Mr. Horner, Mr. Howell, and Mr. Redgrave, and am glad to be able to subjoin the additional evidence on this subject contained in the two following letters :—

DEAR SIR,

Matlock Bath, 24 February 1853.

THE particular localities mentioned in the appendix to your report are in the districts of my colleagues, Mr. Horner and Mr. Howell; but your remarks upon the proportion of schools in which the children derive any of the benefits of "education from their compulsory schooling would apply generally to my own district. I mean that the proportion is lamentably small; not that I can commit myself precisely to figures.

Employments such as that which you found in existence at Leek are not only great evils in themselves, but incidentally, as affecting labour generally, are the cause of much injury; for even if the millowner were desirous of of employing "half-timers," the option of unregulated employment makes

the factory unpalatable to parents, and infant labour is thus thrown entirely into the hands of those who give the longest day's work.

I have several instances of similar employments in my own district, which escape, with manifest injury to the mill occupiers and the hands, the regula tions of the Factory Acts.

The Rev. J. P. Norris.

MY DEAR SIR,

*

*

I remain, &c.,

(Signed) ALEX. REDGRAVE.

82, Upper Brook Street, Manchester, 24 February 1853.

* I entirely agree in all you have said as to the very imperfect operation of the law in respect of the schooling of the factory children. It would be a very great improvement of the law if all schools attended by factory children were placed under the inspection of School Inspectors, with power to them to disallow the certificates of those which they consider unfit, under such guards as might be reasonably provided.

I earnestly hope that an Act to regulate the labour of children in the Potteries, and to make the education of them obligatory, may be brought forward. No one could do it with more effect than Lord Harrowby, and it would be a very appropriate measure to be originated in the House of Lords. I believe it would be carried there by a large majority.

The Rev. J. P. Norris.

I remain, &c.,

But few training schools are provided with so good a model school as that at Caernarvon; its buildings are excellent. The children, about 200 in number, are taught in one large school-room, divided in the centre by a curtain, and provided with parallel desks. The apparatus of instruction is good. The senior students attend the school daily, and there are four pupilteachers.

The master, who has been long resident at Caernarvon, appears to afford an example of whatever is useful and respectable in the character of a national schoolmaster a consideration the importance of which it is impossible to overrate, for it is on the character of the master of the model school, above all the other officers of a training school, that the students have a tendency to form their own characters as teachers.

The expedients which Mr. Foster has adopted in his school, particularly those for teaching English to the Welsh children (a principal part of the school business), reflect great credit on his professional skill; and the discipline of his school is apparently founded on a moral ascendency over the minds of the children. It is impossible to look at his collection of remarkable coins from the site of the ancient Segontium, or at the minerals and fossils which cover the shelves and tables of his little apartment, without recognizing in him a man raised by his tastes and pursuits above the ordinary level of national schoolmasters.

On the second day of our inspection we had the advantage of conferring personally with the committee of the training school.

I am desirous to acknowledge, for my colleague and myself, our sense of the courtesy with which we were received by these gentlemen, and the desire they manifested to comply, as far as the means at their disposal admitted, with various suggestions we were invited to make for the welfare of the school.

I regret to have to record my impression, that by reason of its straitened means the efficiency of this institution as a training school is impaired in the following respects :

In the first place, the lodging (and perhaps the maintenance) of the students is not duly provided for. The payment of two shillings and three-pence a week for lodging and tea is not sufficient to make it worth the while of the persons in whose houses they lodge to receive them singly; several lodge, therefore, in the same house, and two occupy the same bed.

Their bed-rooms, calculated for one person only, are small, and often ill ventilated, and in some instances the separation of their apartment from others in the same house is insufficient.

An arrangement like this, which compels them to the exercise of forethought and of a rigid economy, and which places them in a position of greater independence and moral responsibility, cannot be without its advantages. I hesitate, therefore, to express any opinion as to the question whether it is expedient that the students of a training school should live in private lodgings, and provide for their own board; but there cannot, I think, be a doubt that care should be taken to secure for each a separate bed and a separate bed-room, and to see that it should be well ventilated.

It is, moreover, a question which ought, I think, to be duly considered whether three shillings and sixpence a week is a sufficient sum to be expended on the food of youths of the age of these students.

The students in the training schools in Scotland reside, for the most part, as these do, in private lodgings. The allowances made to them for board and lodging, under the name of bursaries, are there commonly ten shillings a week. (Minutes 1851-52, p. 129, vol. i.)

Of the students present at our examination, some were as remarkable for their pleasing deportment and good manners as for the intelligence with which they answered the questions we proposed to them. It was impossible, however, not to observe with regret a want of carefulness in the persons and the attire of others. Nor could the reflection but present itself, how necessary to the accomplishment of the great purposes of education is the agency of

Q

teachers who, besides the necessary school learning, have acquired manners, habits, and tastes above the class whose social condition it is their function to elevate. It seems, therefore, of importance to insist on a scrupulous observance by these students of all the proprieties of civilised life, destined as they are to form the educators of a people whose neglect of them is remarkable and conspicuous.

It cannot be a normal condition of the Welsh schoolmaster to be rude in his aspect and slovenly in his attire. It is true that the stipends of Welsh schoolmasters are very low. Of six students who were sent out as schoolmasters by this institution during the year terminating at Midsummer, one was receiving a salary of 461., one of 401., one of 307., and three of only 251.*; and there is a tendency in men to come down to a condition of moral and social depression commensurate with their incomes, which no education can be expected altogether to counteract. If this evil is impossible to be remedied, I fear that the question of education in Wales, for any useful purpose, must be given up. A country which is too poor to provide a decent remuneration for its teachers is too poor to educate itself.

The second point on which the smallness of the income of the institution affords ground for regret is the impossibility of providing adequate stipends for the officers, or a sufficient number of them for conducting the institution efficiently.

It is only by labours, which have impaired his health, that the excellent principal has hitherto been able to conduct the institution with that measure of success to which I have borne testimony, and which, under the circumstances, must be considered remarkable. It is unreasonable to expect that such labours should be continued. They have, moreover, been most inadequately remunerated. The appointment of a vice-principal is indispensable. As, moreover, there is a great demand for teachers of navigation in Wales, it would seem desirable to have a third master capable of teaching this subject, and who might fill the office of assistant to the normal master.†

On the whole, referring to your letter of the 20th March, and to the memorial enclosed therein, I am of an opinion that the students of the Caernarvon Training School should be examined annually for certificates at Christmas, and that the institution should receive the same grants in respect to students who obtain such certificates as other training schools receive.

And although I am unable to report that with its present limited staff of officers, and with its imperfect arrangements for the board and lodging of the students, this training school is adapted for the education of Queen's scholars, yet I cannot but express a hope that it will hereafter become so ; and the more so as their Lordships will then be enabled to extend to it from the public educational fund that more liberal aid which otherwise they would be precluded from affording to it, but of which it stands so much in need.

In bringing under your notice the inadequate funds of this institution, I cannot but advert to the fact, that the local subscriptions for its support amount to no more than 521. 4s. annually. It has been customary, I know, to assume, whenever the question of education in Wales is brought under discussion, that it is a poor country; and this is probably true of it as a whole, and of its inland and rural districts in particular. But the country around Caernarvon is the seat of a great and lucrative industry. It draws a large revenue from its slate quarries, supplying a great part of the consumption of the entire kingdom. The cottages of the workinen in these quarries are secn strewn thickly over the face of the country. They earn high wages;

*It is not stated in the returns whether houses are allowed in addition to these salaries.

† Some of the pupil-teachers in the Royal Nayal School, Greenwich Hospital, would be found eligible for this office.

and no class of persons could probably be found to whom it is more desirable to afford the means of education, or who would be more likely to avail themselves of them. I have made these observations, in the hope of bringing the claims and the necessities of the Caernarvon Training School under the favourable notice of some of those gentlemen who are locally interested in its success, but to whom those claims and those necessities, and the great merits of the institution, may possibly be unknown. I have the honor to be, &c.

The Secretary of the

Committee of Council on Education.

MEMORANDUM.

TRAINING INSTITUTION.

HENRY MOSELEY.

The institution originated in the year 1844, in connexion with the National School, Caernarvon, the committee of which had had the said lack of masters in North Wales frequently and urgently pressed upon their attention. Up to 1849, Mr. James Foster, the master of the National School, alone instructed the pupils in training. As these very humble efforts of the committee were successful, and a large fund having been collected by the Welsh Education Committee of the National Society for the purpose of promoting education in both North and South Wales, and which had the effect of withdrawing many of the subscribers from the training institution, application was made to them for assistance, which, being supported by the bishops of Bangor and St. Asaph, was successful, when a liberal grant was made. The institution now assumed a more permanent character. The Rev. B. J. Binns was then appointed principal by the bishops of North Wales, and Mr. James Foster, normal master. This occurred in the year 1849; since which year seven masters have taken Government certificates, and the committee of the institution have had the great satisfaction afforded them of seeing very favourable reports from Her Majesty's Inspector of the state of the schools in North Wales to which masters had been sent from the institution. The whole number sent out since 18-14 amounts to eighty

seven masters.

The circumstances respecting North Wales are very peculiar, and in every respect dissimilar to what exists in England. The population is principally rural. North Wales is a poor district; the emolument paid to masters is very small indeed; the resident gentry are not numerous, and very lukewarm on the subject of education. From these causes, and from the experience of the committee in making application for money for educational purposes, they felt convinced that had an attempt been made to obtain funds to erect a large building for the purpose of a training institution it would have resulted in certain failure. They, therefore, were driven to the simple and cheap course of renting an appropriate class-room, &c., &c.

From the same cause the committee have been forced in every instance to make grants for the support of the pupils while in training. Unless this course had been pursued, no candidates would have offered. The committee, however, are gradually reducing these grants, the many advantages offered to masters by the Committee of Council's Minutes beginning to operate most successfully.

In addition to the pecuniary consideration just referred to, other reasons operated with the committee to induce them to prefer the system of allowing young men to lodge out rather than reside together in the institution. They would thus be more thrown on their own resources, and, therefore, the better able to support themselves, and to husband frugally the very small incomes they would receive as masters.

The utmost care and circumspection are used by the committee in selecting lodgings; and they have the great satisfaction of stating that not a