APPENDIX A.

LIST of PUPIL-TEACHERS, in Rev. J. J. Blandford's District, who have obtained Queen's Scholarships in December 1854.

SUMMARIES OF TABULATED REPORTS ON SCHOOLS INSPECTED BY REV. J. J. BLANDFORD AND REV. E. P. ARNOLD.

The amount of accommodation in square feet, divided by 8, will give the number of children who can be properly accommodated. Calculations of area in school-rooms, as compared with the average attendance of scholars, should be made upon this basis.

† At the date of closing this return,

Per-centage of Children present at examination, learning*

Arithmetic as far as

Simple Addition.

18.87 0.18 0.21 0.03 0.93 4 35 10 52 28 0 54 97 2.14 4 28 10 87 22 03 27 4

28 9615 22 14.91 13 38 10.3 7.66 4.88 3.29 1.4 3.22 3.87 7.8 12.08 19.67

SUMMARY b.

Aggregate Annual Income, as stated by Managers, of 151 of the Schools

From Endowment.

enumerated in Summary A.

From Voluntary
Contributions.

From other
Sources.

TOTAL.

From
School-pence.

* These per-centages are confined to boys' and girls' schools, and do not include infants.

General Report, for the Year 1854, by Her Majesty's Inspector
of Schools, the Rev. W. H. BROOKFIELD, M.A., on the
Schools inspected in the Counties of Kent, Surrey, and
Sussex, and in the Channel Islands.

Tabular statement of

schools

MY LORDS,

January 1855.

THE following Table, relating to 173 schools, under character of separate teachers, inspected by myself during the year ending inspected. 31 August 1854 (besides about 298 visited by my colleague, the Rev. R. L. Koe, within the same period), will present, I hope, a comprehensive and intelligible view, not only of the actual educational condition of my district (so far as it may be represented by these schools casually selected), but also, of the comparative estimate which I have been able to form of schools variously circumstanced; as, for instance, schools under male and female, certificated and uncertificated, teachers; schools regularly inspected, as being in the receipt of annual grants and co-operating with the Minutes of Council; and such as from a variety of causes are hitherto precluded from that advantage, and therefore inspected only occasionally, and as time and opportunity may serve. The standard which I have adopted, it is true, may be considered arbitrary. It may be a trifle higher or a trifle lower than another Inspector might have used for a similar purpose; but, judging from the number of certificate augmentations in my district, the number of paid pupil-teachers, and of successful candidates for Queen's scholarships, I have no reason to think that the standard of instruction prevalent in the counties of Surrey, Kent, and Sussex falls at all below that which on the same tests will be found to exist throughout the kingdom. The Table comprises a few inspections-not more than twelve-which took place in Hampshire just before Christmas 1853, when it was separated from my district. They are too few to affect the general estimate of the southeastern counties in any appreciable degree; and the comparative estimates they do not affect at all.

TABULATED STATEMENT relating to 173 Schools (under separate Teachers) inspected by Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, Rev. W. H. Brookfield, in Year ended 31 August 1854.

racter of

described.

Schoools marked "fair."

General cha For the purpose of indicating the character of the schools to these schools which the preceding Table relates, I have availed myself of terms found convenient in examination papers, as representing six gradations of merit. By the middle term "Fair," I understand a school of average creditable kind, but with nothing to boast of. In such a school,-say of seventy-five children,—a first class of fifteen in number (average age twelve) would read a page of natural history,-about an elephant, the cotton tree, or a crocodile,with tolerable fluency and intelligence, and with scarcely a mistake; they would answer collateral questions upon it, not well, but not preposterously ill; they would have a general knowledge of the distribution and conventional divisions of land and water over the surface of the globe; most of them would name the counties on an unlettered map of England, and the kingdoms on one of Europe; they would work a sum in compound addition-two thirds of them without mistake; they would write out a short account of any object mentioned to them which they had seen or read about,—an animal, a tree, a flower,-intelligibly, and not without thought and observation, but with trifling errors of grammar and of spelling; they would have a pretty fair knowledge of the leading incidents of the Book of Genesis and of the Gospels, but with very imperfect notions as to their order of time; they would repeat the Church Catechism with verbal accuracy, but with very faint apprehension of its meaning; they would be able to repeat a few (but in my own experience, very few) texts of Scripture, and those chiefly of prophetic or doctrinal application;-for which, with unaffected deference to better judgments, I should be glad to see substituted (if there be not time for both), and copiously substituted, the preceptive, the warning, the consolatory. For the general purposes of edifying the church at large, I should be far from daring to say that one fragment of an inspired whole is more or less important than another; but, for little children, twelve years old, and those the children of the labouring poor,-if, of such texts as "There be three that bear record, &c.," and such as "Come unto me all ye that labour, &c.," or "Suffer little children, &c.," there be really time and opportunity to learn only very few,—I should venture to suggest a preference for those of the latter class. In such a school as I have been adverting to,-marked "Fair,"-the remaining four or five classes would show attainment proportionably graduated from that which I have represented as usually belonging to the first. With respect to acquirement, boys are ordinarily a little in advance of girls, because they have more time for it. The girls compensate by a somewhat livelier intelligence, by prettier reading, by better discipline, and by needlework, on which two fifths of their time are spent.