The State of Elementary Education in 1856

When in 1855 the Commission on Education appointed by the Provincial Council came to examine the state of education in the province, it found that only 600 children out of a population of 6,000 were attending day schools and that even where the Nelson School Society had established schools, little more than half of the children attended them. The Commission was dismayed by the evidence of "educational destitution even more than had been anticipated". The figures quoted indicated that 10 per cent of the population was attending school. In his report on the educational derived from the 1851 census of England and Wales, Horace Mann had estimated that only 12 per cent of the population was at school, whereas he considered that 16.8 per cent was a reasonable proportion of the population to be at school. Perhaps the Nelson Commissioners expected too much of their frontier society with its limited resources and early tribulations. Mindful of the suspicious initial achievement recorded in late 1843, they were disappointed with the limited progress made since then.

In spite of the praise and encouragement lavished upon the Nelson School Society by local leaders such as Domett. Dillon Fox and others and the favourable comment in the local newspaper, managers of the Society had page 21failed to fulfil their ambitions which was "to extend their usefulness until every child in the settlement of Nelson may be provided with an education under the open and liberal system which they have established". A major failure of the Society had been its inability to keep open the day schools which it founded in the rural areas, although it must be conceded that the closing down of some of these schools was due to the decline of population in the areas which they served and not to any fault of the Society. Only the Nelson school did not have to close down for a period. Even that school was in a very precarious position at times. Saxton in his diary records that in 1849 he attended a meeting at "Campbell's school" where it was disclosed that only 23 boys and 20 girls were attending. Competition from the Anglican and Wesleyan schools may have been the cause of this decline. The intermittent closing down of country schools must have had a deleterious effect on the children's education and a demoralising effect on the teachers. The Nelson Examiner in 1856 noted that within a few years seven teachers had endeavoured to make a living at the Stoke school, but had been "starved out there, the weekly pittances in some instances being what is now paid to a labourer for a day's wages". It should not, however, be forgotten that the Society's policy of maintaining Sunday Schools in all centres in which it operated ensured that at least some instruction was offered to local children when the day school was closed.