of the school in question cannot be suitably undertaken, Her Majesty's Inspector is at liberty to make an entry to this effect on the Form No. 5., and my Lords will undertake to have the requisite communication made to the managers from this office. Cases so postponed will be collected, and the number of them will be an additional guide for my Lords in determining whether, when, and how far to augment the staff of Inspectors. In referring to you the Forms 5, the following plan will be pursued :— Reference will be made to the last detailed statement of grants for pupilteachers which has been printed in their Lordships' Minutes (see, e. g., that printed in the Minutes of 1850–1, Vol. i., pp. 141-214), and the month or months which may be found to have been assigned by you to the county where the school is situated will be entered for your guidance on the Form, as well as a statement of the number of annual grant cases already requiring visits from you in the same month or months. To the Rev. SIR, Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. I have the honor to be, &c. R. R. W. LINGEN. Enclosure (Form No. 5) referred to in foregoing Letter. Committee of Council on Education, Council Office, Downing Street, I HAVE the honor to annex a schedule of schools in your district the managers of which have applied to the Committee of Council for annual aid. I am directed to request that you will have the goodness to enter, in the appropriate column, opposite to the name of each school, the name of the month in whch you could best visit it from year to year. This should be done with as little delay as possible, as the cases cannot be put forward until the requisite information has been received. I have the honor to be, &c. (Signed) R. R. W. LINGEN. To Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. (No. 2.) Pupil Teachers and Assistant Teachers. (Referring to foregoing Minutes of 10 December 1851, 12 May 1852, and In explana SIR, tion of recent Minutes, as to position of pupilteachers, and as to assistant teachers. 23 July 1852.) Committee of Council on Education, I AM directed to request your attention to the foregoing minutes, (the object of which has formed matter of discussion at several conferences of Her Majesty's Inspectors) concerning the position of pupil-teachers who will henceforth be completing their apprenticeship pursuant to the Minutes of 1846. The following explanatory paragraphs are numbered for the sake of convenience in referring to them : 1. The apprenticeship of a pupil-teacher has never been contemplated as sufficient in point of preparation for the office of schoolmaster or schoolmistress. The Minutes of 1846 expressly advert to the further training of apprentices in a normal school. 2. The Minutes of 1846 confine certificates of merit, and the corresponding grants in augmentation of salaries, to those teachers who have been students in normal schools. 3. The examination of teachers who have not been trained in normal schools is provided for by a supplementary regulation, having reference to persons already engaged in the profession. At the date of that regulation (July 1847) it is evident that pupil-teachers, who were only then just beginning to be apprenticed, were not contemplated. There was, however, a large (nearly the whole existing) class of teachers to be borne in mind, who had entered upon their career at a time antecedent to the formation of training schools under Government Inspection. 4. The annual examinations, which now for five consecutive years have 'been open to untrained teachers in all parts of the country, may be assumed to have afforded to the majority of them an opportunity of obtaining the same rewards of proficiency and merit as were opened by the Minutes of 1846 to their juniors. 5. It would be equally inconsistent with the Minutes of 1846, and with the object for which the examination of untrained teachers was instituted, that this examination should become the means of diverting pupil-teachers from the training schools. 6. There is, however, manifest danger of this result, without some such declaratory provision as that set forth in the Minute of the 10th of December 1851. The effect of this provision will be to mark, perhaps with somewhat greater definiteness than has hitherto been attainable, the position of a certificated teacher as one which implies either special preparation in a normal college or considerable probation in practice. The number of normal colleges throughout the country, as compared with the number of pupil-teachers, is not such as would warrant the Committee of Council in making them the only entrances through which the public emoluments of the profession can be reached. 7. Applications for the appointment of assistant teachers must, in the first instance, be made to the Committee of Council by the managers of the school in which they are to be employed. Every such application should specify (a) the name of the school on account of which it is made, (b) the name in full of the proposed assistant, (c) the name of the school in which he has served his apprenticeship, (d) the exact date at which it is proposed that the Assistant shall begin to serve. The application should precede this date by at least fourteen days. 8. You will observe that assistant teachers are allowed in those schools only in which the principal teacher is certificated. It is not the intention of the Committee of Council to provide deputies by the side of inefficient masters and mistresses, but to place pupil-teachers who have completed their apprenticeship in a situation to improve themselves on the way to further advancement. 9. The office of assistant teacher (besides its important bearings on the work of instruction,-the new field of employment which it opens for pupilteachers, and its tendency to check any excessive increase in their number) will especially facilitate their passage through the required period of probation to the rank of certificated masters and mistresses. It will be observed that there is nothing in their Lordships' Minutes to prevent assistant teachers from competing for Queen's Scholarships. It will, therefore, be optional with them, at any time, to seek this entrance into their profession, or, after the end of three years, to be examined for a certificate of merit as assistant teachers and not as students. 10. The stipends of assistant teachers will be paid at the same time as those of the pupil-teachers in each school. No stipends (after the first) will be paid for fractional portions of a year, unless the year's service shall have been interrupted on account of death, sickness authenticated by a medical certificate, or removal to a training school on obtaining a Queen's Scholarship. The year's service will be deemed to have been interrupted by the dismissal or voluntary withdrawal of the assistant before the end of it, or by any unreasonable delay on the part of the managers in supplying vacancies in the appointment of principal teacher. 11. A question arises whether these assistants should receive special instruction from the principal teacher out of school-hours, and, if so, under what conditions. It may be anticipated that young persons of sufficient age and attainments to seek the office of assistant will be materially influenced, in the selection of schools wherein to serve, by the ability of the principal teacher to aid them in their studies. Such aid, however, would not be completely given by combining them with the apprentices, in the hours during which the latter are to receive special instruction; nor, on the other hand, would it be desirable to encroach further upon the principal teacher's leisure out of school-hours, by requiring him in all cases to give separate lessons to his assistants. As a general rule, therefore, their Lordships do not propose to allow any gratuity, or to lay down any regulations, for the special instruction of assistants by principal teachers. As matter of fact, it will commonly happen that sometimes by express arrangement between the parties, and oftener by tacit understanding and mutual good will, the senior will help the junior teacher. An assistant who is fit for his post will not need that constant succession of fixed lessons which is prescribed for a pupilteacher, but will rather look for occasional assistance in difficulties arising out of his own studies, or for guidance to direct him from time to time in his further progress. No assistant ought to be appointed, or maintained in his place, who falls short of the standard prescribed for the end of the fifth year's apprenticeship; nor do my Lords feel warranted in offering any premium for the instruction of assistants up to that standard which they ought already to have attained. If, however, in geography, history, the analysis of language, arithmetic, linear drawing, vocal music from notes, or in any branch of physical science, or of pure or applied mathematics, the assistant shall, with the principal teacher's aid, have mastered some text book, to be submitted in the first instance for approval by Her Majesty's Inspector, and shall have given sufficient evidence of proficiency in the subject-matter of that text book upon examination, my Lords would, on the report of Her Majesty's Inspector, take into consideration the propriety of allowing the same gratuity to the principal teacher as if the assistant had been his apprentice. It is to be understood that this offer is strictly confined to special proficiency in some one of the foregoing subjects. In the case of female ass.stants thorough acquaintance with the principles and practice of domestic economy in its several branches would be accepted in lieu of the foregoing subjects. Notice of the subject and text book selected must be given to Her Majesty's Inspector (who will report it to the Committee of Council for proper record) at least nine months before the end of the year, as reckoned for inspection in the particular school; i. e., if the inspection of the school falls due in December, notice must be given before the end of March in the same year; arrangements will then be made for the examination of the assistant out of the book selected. The assistant, if not offering any special subject for examination, might be annually required, at the discretion of Her Majesty's Inspector, to pass an examination, either oral or written, in all or any of the subjects required of pupil-teachers at the end of the fifth year of their apprenticeship. It would be proper to insist upon such an examination in cases where the state of knowledge in the school, or the inspector's observation of the assistant's manner of imparting any particular branch of instruction, might suggest a doubt as to the sufliciency of his attainments. Her Majesty's Inspector would, in all cases, make the assistant teach for a considerable time in his presence. In the pursuit of religious knowledge, the assistants will naturally seek advice and guidance from the ministers of religion who attend their respective schools. 12. Assistant teachers may be reported on in the Form X., but they must, of course, be carefully distinguished in it from the apprentices. 13. In accordance with the view herein-before stated, concerning the object of the Easter examinations for certificates of merit, and pursuant to the intimation conveyed in the Minute dated the 25th of July 1850, I have the honor to inform you that district examinations will be held as heretofore in the Easter week of 1853, but that thenceforth they will not be held as matter of course in each year. The examinations which are held at Christmas in each year, at the several training schools under inspection, are generally opened, by the courtesy of the authorities of those institutions, to teachers desirous of obtaining certificates of merit who are properly introduced, although such teachers may never have been students. District examinations will, after Easter next, only be held as it may from time to time become apparent that any considerable number of teachers has been unable to take advantage of the examinations at the training schools. 14. I am directed to remind you that the proposed appointment of assistants will require the most vigilant attention on the part of Her Majesty's Inspectors in carrying the examination of pupil-teachers for the end of the fourth and fifth years of their apprenticeship to the full extent of the several subjects named in the Minutes of 1846. I have the honor to be, &c., To Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. (No. 3.) SIR, Additional Assistant Inspectors of Schools. ADVERTING to the letter from this office, whereby you were informed Instructions that you would be assisted by [ with reference to ap in the inspection of schools in your district, I am directed by the Lord pointment President of the Council to request your attention to the following instruc- of additional tions : (1st.) It is not the intention of the Committee of Council that the addition now made to the staff of Her Majesty's Inspectors should become the means of proportionately increasing the number of pupil-teachers apprenticed under the Minutes of 1846. This caution would have been superfluous before the late increase to the number of Inspectors, because the annual payment of each pupil-teacher depends upon an annual report by one of Her Majesty's Inspectors, and those officers had already, for the most part, even more of such engagements on their hands than they could conveniently dispatch. There are now nearly 6,000 pupil-teachers in various stages of apprenticeship; they cost in stipends and gratuities about 100,000l. per annum, and 1,200 of them in each year are completing their term of service. The limit thus practically fixed, up to the present time, is one which in point of expense, and the probable demand for teachers, my Lords are of opinion ought not to be inconsiderately extended. The Lord President desires, therefore, that you will continue to give full effect to the instructions (of which you are requested again to peruse the annexed copies) dated 13 June and 4 October 1851*, and that you will endeavour to find out which are the best schools in your district wherein to place the present number of pupil-teachers, the increase of which is not intended to be promoted by the additional means of inspection placed at your disposal. The services of an Assistant Inspector are meant specially to meet the case of those schools which are liable to inspection, but have not of late been within the means of inspection. Among these schools the business of inspection should be prosecuted with a view to raise them to the standard suitable for the reception of pupilteachers, in order that the best of them may from time to time be advanced to supply the place of those schools which, having enjoyed the benefit of pupil-teachers, have nevertheless made no corresponding progress. The managers of schools thus recovered to inspection should be encou raged to engage certificated teachers; to procure more and better books, maps, and apparatus; to build classrooms; and to set up galleries and groups of parallel desks and benches; being at the same time informed or reminded of the public assistance that is to be had for each or all of these objects. The annexed broad sheet†, memorandum, and circulars contain the necessary information with which Her Majesty's Inspectors and Assistant Inspectors should make themselves familiar. (2nd.) The Lord President desires that nothing in the nature of a permanent division of district be made between the Inspector and Assistant Inspector. The Inspector continues generally responsible for the whole • Vide Minutes of 1851-2, pp. 101–103. + "Augmentation Broad Sheet" (vide page 68). # Memorandum on Organization of Schools (vide Minutes of 1851-2, p. 71). § Explanatory Circular relating to grants of Books and Maps (vide Minutes of 1847-8, Vol. i., p. xviii). Assistant |