The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 41

[introduction]

The best trained and most efficient of our young teachers, in

What pupil, teachers are.

general, are those who have first been pupil-teachers and who have afterwards passed a year at the Training College. The pupil-teacher is a boy or girl who, as the name implies, is at once learning and teaching; getting private lessons from the master and taking a class during the day. The pupil-teacher in theory passes an examination at entrance and an examination every year, and receives a small stipend, that is gradually augmented as the services paid for become more and more valuable. In some cases the pupil-teacher, on conclusion of a five years' course, becomes a trainee at a so-called Training College. This is a school in a large town, the head master of which receives a salary of £50 a year as training master, and a bonus on all the pupils he sends up who pass a successful examination. Besides this, he gains indirectly by securing the services of the best pupil-teachers in his school. From the school or district training college the pupil-teacher passes to the Training College in Melbourne, presided over by Mr. Gladman, and spends a year under the direction of teachers paid by the State in preparing for a final examination. If this is successfully passed, the trainee receives a certificate, and passes with credit into the State service.

Mr. Gladman has kindly drawn up a scheme for the requirements of pupil-teachers, which slightly increases the present demands on them, but not more than will be amply compensated by the increased time allowed them in their fourth year.

* This is now partly remedied.