In the meantime my Lords will be happy to place in the hands of Her Majesty's Inspectors copies of your letter of the 28th ultimo and its enclosures. I enclose a list of the training schools under inspection. These institutions are some of the most likely either to furnish students for attending a central drawing school, or to avail themselves of the services of an attendant I have the honor to be, &c., (Signed) master. W. R. Deverell, Esq. R. R. W. LINGEN. Enclosure referred to in letter No. 7. LIST of TRAINING SCHOOLS under Inspection, at which Pupil-teachers who have successfully completed the fourth year of their Apprenticeship may attend to be examined for Queen's Scholarships. Name of Training Schools. Name and Address of Correspondent. Training Schools for Masters only. Battersea (National Society's) Chichester (Diocesan) Hammersmith, St. Mary's, (Roman Ca- Kneller Hall (for Workhouse Schools and Schools connected with Government Establishments). Oxford (Diocesan) Metropolitan (Church of England) Rev. S. Clarke, Battersea. Rev. W. Reed, Caermarthen. Rev. Derwent Coleridge, St. Mark's, Chelsea. Rev. M. Parrington, Chichester. Rev. Chancellor Harington, Exeter. S. N. Stokes, Esq., Brook Green House, Hammersmith. Rev. F. Temple, Kneller Hall, Isleworth, Middlesex. Rev. A. R. Ashwell, Culham, Abingdon. Saitley, near Birmingham, (Worcester Dio- Rev. W. Gover, Saltley, Birmingham. cesan). Winchester (Diocesan) Rev. P. Jacob, Winchester. Training Schools for Mistresses only. Bishop's Stortford (Rochester Diocesan) Derby (Lichfield Diocesan) Rev. J. Menet, Hockerill, Bishop's Stortford. Gray's Inn Road (Home and Colonial J.S. Reynolds, Esq., Gray's Inn Road. School Society's). Norwich (Diocesan) Salisbury (Diocesan) Whitelands (National Society's) Warrington (Chester Diocesan) Rev. A. B. Power, Norwich. Rev. W. K. Hamilton, Salisbury. Rev. Harry Baber, Whitelands House, Chel sea. Rev. R. Greenall, Stretton, near Warrington. Training Schools for both Masters and Mistresses. Borough Road (British and Foreign School | Henry Dunn, Esq., Borough Road, London. Society's). Circular letter to Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, relating to foregoing Committee of Council on Education, Council Office, SIR, In continuation of that correspondence, my Lords have desired me to enclose copies of a Minute adopted by the Board of Trade, together with corresponding forms of application and inquiry. The object of the Board of Trade in issuing these documents is further illustrated by the enclosed official pamphlet. It is the wish of their Lordships of the Committee of Council on Education that you should use every opportunity which your official position may afford to encourage the formation of drawing schools, and the employment of the masters from them in common elementary day schools, pursuant to the intention of the Board of Trade. You will notice that the development of instruction in elementary drawing is contemplated under two forms : 1. A local committee is supposed to be constituted for the formation of a drawing school at which students are to attend in classes. Of course nothing but drawing would be taught in such a school. 2. The managers of common elementary day schools within reach of the drawing school are supposed to put themselves in communication with its committee, in order to get the benefit of it for their own scholars. For instance they might subscribe so much in the name of their own schools, and thereby obtain the privilege of presenting so many of their own scholars as students in the drawing school; or they might obtain the attendance of the drawing master at their own school at a certain fixed charge. The proposal now made still leaves the former offer open, whereby the masters of elementary schools under inspection, in towns where the Board of Trade has established branch schools of design, may attend the classes in those schools gratuitously, and may obtain the assistance of the board's local officers in organizing classes for drawing in their own schools, as well as free grants of apparatus for the same purpose. My Lords would be happy to learn that in any part of your district you had succeeded in giving practical effect to one or more of these recommendations. Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, &c. I have the honor to be, &c. (Signed) R. R. W. LINGEN. SCHOOL REGISTERS. (No. 1.) London, 23 December 1851. I FEEL it to be my duty to direct attention to the imperfect manner in which attendance registers are kept in many schools, and the defective way in which consequently the average attendance is obtained. It is impossible for the Inspector to verify the statements of the managers unless there be some prescribed form of school register adopted for that purpose. I have the honor to be, &c. (Signed) M. MITCHELL. REVEREND SIR, Committee of Council on Education, I HAVE the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 23rd instant. Her Majesty's Inspectors are required to note those schools in which the registers are either imperfect or imperfectly kept. The Committee of Council would consider continued neglect in this particular as a ground for ultimately withholding annual grants from the school in question. I have the honor to be, &c. (Signed) The Rev. M. Mitchell, R. R. W. LINGEN. H. M. Inspector of Schools, &c. L REVEREND SIR, RAGGED SCHOOLS. (No. 1.) BRISTOL INDUSTRIAL RAgged School. Committee of Council on Education, I HAVE the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your report on this school. There is no objection to the apprenticeship of pupil-teachers in schools where industrial is combined with intellectual instruction; but this is not the These only feature, nor even the characteristic feature, of ragged schools. institutions, by the offer of food and of gratuitous instruction, affect injuriously such schools as recognize the responsibility of parents to pay for the education of their children, and they tend in the same degree to weaken the sense of this responsibility in the labouring class. In the present state of society, these may be necessary evils, or even (in comparison with other and greater evils) benefits. It is, however, of extreme importance to maintain a distinction between those schools in which the children pay fees, and do not receive food, on the one hand, and those schools, on the other hand, which assume the scholars to be paupers. One way of making this distinction on the part of the Government is, to refuse to pay the stipends of pupil-teachers in schools of the latter class. Apprenticeships were sanctioned in some few instances of the kind, before the subject had been much considered; but, although my Lords are not prepared to say that they would absolutely decline to repeat the experiment, still they are by no means disposed to do so on a large scale; and they would require very cogent reasons to be stated in any particular case for a departure from the general rule. The position of the pupil-teacher is a public one, and my Lords think that it should be understood, as it is formally declared*, to be a prize for the children of independent parents who make sacrifices to educate them properly. I have the honor to be, &c. R. R. W. LIngen. The Rev. H. W. Bellairs, H. M. Inspector of Schools, &c. (No. 2.) Philanthropic, Red Hill, SIR, I HAVE the honor to enclose to you a Memorial to the Committee of Privy Council on Education relative to the obtaining aid from Government grants to ragged schools, and to the conditions on which that aid may be most advantageously afforded; and I would beg the favor of your laying the same before their Lordships at your early convenience. The memorial emanates originally from a meeting of those interested in the prevention of crime and the reformation of juvenile offenders, held at Birmingham in December last. Its presentation has, however, been delayed, partly from the desire of ascertaining the sentiments of the friends of ragged schools in our larger towns and cities, and partly from the feeling that the recommendations of the Committee of the House of Commons on Destitute and Criminal Juveniles might render it unnecessary to trouble the Committee of Council on the subject. The Parliamentary investigation having been necessarily left imperfect, and the promoters of ragged schools in Liverpool, Hull, Bristol, &c., &c., being anxious that no further delay should take place, I have the honor at once to forward it to you, and to express my hope that your own favorable consideration will be given to the best means of extending the aid which is now afforded by different channels, to the innocent on the one hand, and the criminal on the other, -to that intermediate and truly pitiable class, which, while below the level of the one, has not yet sunk to that of the other, and should be, if possible, saved from falling into it. I have the honor to be, &c. The Secretary of the (Signed) SYDNEY TURNER. One of the Honorary Secretaries to the Preventative and Reformatory School Committee. Committee of Council on Education, &c. Enclosures in No. 2. (Enclosure A.) MEMORIAL to the Committee of Privy Council on Education in behalf of YOUR Lordships memorialists respectfully beg to represent that an increasingly large class of schools called the ragged schools or free day schools for the destitute, intended for those children who, by reason of the vice, neglect, or extreme poverty of their parents, are inadmissible to the Vide" Pupil-teacher Broadsheet," page 67, as to certificates required for admission of a pupil-teacher to apprenticeship. existing school establishments recognized by your Lordships, do not and cannot receive any fair proportion of the Parliamentary grant for public education, under the existing regulations, yet that for their maintenance in an effective condition they require it in a far higher degree. They cannot at present receive such aid, for the following reasons: 1. The neglected condition of the children requires very peculiar qualifi- 2. The arrangements respecting pupil-teachers and stipendiary monitors 4. The buildings for such schools are necessarily in poor parts of towns, 5. The schools themselves must necessarily be in such an educational condition that they would hardly be considered entitled to receive grants of books and apparatus under your Lordships present regulations. Ragged schools or free day schools for the destitute are therefore at present virtually excluded from aid. They perform, however, a very important work, by acting on a class as yet uninfluenced by religious or general education; but such schools, to be of use, must be efficiently conducted. To be so, a much larger amount of support is required than suffices for the maintenance of ordinary day schools, inasmuch as no pence are paid by the children, and a larger staff of teachers, many of them industrial, is required. The most strenuous efforts on the part of benevolent persons have hitherto failed to raise an adequate income for such schools, or to carry them on as they would desire. Your memorialists would therefore respectfully but earnestly pray, 1st. That masters who give satisfactory proof that they are fitted to carry out the objects of ragged schools be aided by a grant from your Lordships. 2d. That monitors articled for two or three years, and undergoing an examination calculated to test their fitness for assisting in these schools, should receive, as in ordinary schools, a reasonable payment for their services, and that a greater number of them should be allowed. 3d. That your Lordships conditions in respect of buildings, industrial training, and apparatus should be so modified as to meet the circumstances of such schools. |