Higher Elementary Schools.

We could hardly overstate our appreciation of the value of the pian of giving instruction in natural science by special teachers, as carried out in the board schools of Liv- page 45 erpool and Birmingham, where the employment of a well qualified science demonstrator insures the sound character of the instruction, while the repetition of the lesson by the schoolmaster enables him to improve himself in the methods of science teaching. This should, however, be supplemented by the establishment of higher elementary schools like those of Sheffield and Manchester, into which the more advanced pupils of the primary schools may be drafted, especially if the parents of those children should be able to keep them at school up to the age of fourteen or fifteen unassisted, or if they are unable to do so, assisted by scholarships taking the place of the wages which they would otherwise earn. In these latter schools it is possible to provide efficient laboratories in which practical work is performed by the pupils, while this cannot adequately be done for the ordinary primary schools. Youths having the advantage of such instruction will be well prepared to avail themselves at a later period of the classes of the Science and Art Department and of the technical classes under the auspices of the City and Guilds Institute, which are now so numerous, and many of which are under excellent teachers.

The evidence given before us leaves no doubt that the directors of both these institutions use every effort in their power to secure sound and practical teaching in these classes, so far as that can be effected by assistance in training the teachers and by careful testing, in their examinations, of the results of the instruction given. In regard to the first, much is to be hoped for from the increasing number of teachers who are now able to take advantage of the high scientific instruction given in the Normal School of Science at South Kensington, as well as from the pecuniary assistance offered by the Science and Art department to science teachers desirous of attending the courses and laboratories of various provincial colleges, while for teachers of technology a great step in advance will be made when the Central Institution of the City Guilds is in operation. As to the latter—that is to say, the thoroughness of the instruction given in the classes—more close and frequent inspection than at present is much to be desired, a higher payment for the more advanced grades of several subjects should be made than is now the case, and practical laboratory work in the higher grades in science should be more genrally demanded.

An important point to which the attention of the inspectors should be more, particularly directed is to ascertain that proper apparatus and appliances are provided for practical work in these classes.