Introduction.

The Elementary Education Act, 1876, introduces little that is new in principle—being designed and framed rather to connect, develop, and extend existing agencies, both voluntary and governmental, than to create and establish anything new. In it we have the important declaration, that "it is the duty of the parent of every child to cause such child to receive an efficient elementary education"; and the neglect of the duty renders the offending parties liable to penalties. Previous voluntary efforts, strengthened by state grants, have brought education within the reach of nearly all; and by the Act of 1870, compulsion was permissively and partially applied. Thus the parental obligation, morally binding alike upon all, was legally binding only upon accidental portions of the community. The weakness of the position was apparent, and called for remedy. One of the leading purposes of Lord Sandon's Act is to provide means whereby the parental obligation shall be rendered binding alike upon all. Hence, on the one hand, the principle of Mr. Forster's Act is sustained, by page vi which the ratepayers are at liberty either to appoint or to refrain from appointing a school board, with whom rest the sole power of making compulsory bye-laws; but, on the other hand, provision is now made for the extension of compulsory powers by means of school-attendance committees, to be appointed in a borough by the town council, and in a parish by the guardians. These committees are endowed with powers similar to those already vested in school boards, by which they can make bye-laws enjoining school attendance; and, in addition, they become the constituted authorities for carrying out the enactments of the Act itself, as well as the clauses of the Factory Acts bearing upon the education of children employed in factories, workshops, and mines. At the same time, the application of those enactments is rendered more simple and uniform. Thus, from the first of January, 1877, both direct and indirect compulsion, within given limits as to age and occupation, may he applied to school attendance.

Again, in working the previous educational Acts, it was found that a large class of neglected children? remained untouched. These, for moral reasons, could not be gathered into the public elementary school; and for economical reasons they were to a very large: extent left outside the walls of the industrial school, Besides the great public expense of supporting so page vii large a number of children, the destruction of the parental tie was an obvious danger. To meet the difficulty the Act of 1876 provides for the establishment of Day Industrial Schools, in which elementary teaching, combined with industrial training, will be carried on at the trifling cost of one or more meals per day. The children will continue to lodge at home, thus retaining something of the parental tie, while the cost of the partly gratuitous and partly earned meals will fall but lightly upon the ratepayers.

The Act of 1876 repeals the 25th section of the Act of 1870, and assigns to the guardians of the poor the duties relating to the payment of school fees. By this alteration school boards are relieved from some very onerous duties, for which they had not the requisite machinery.

Experience alone can decide upon the merits of the new Act, but the friends of popular education have reason to be thankful for the legislative sanction it gives to the cardinal principle of compulsion as a national safeguard against the evils of ignorance.