The immediate pecuniary advantage to the school from these allowances is to be found not in relieving the school fund, but in providing better teachers than those funds alone could pay for, and by thus making the school more self-supporting through the increased payments from a larger number of children which such teachers may be expected to gather round them. Good teachers will always prove the best economy. V. Pupil Teachers. The Committee of Council allow one for every forty Children, in Schools under certificated or registered teachers, and which are reported on inspection as suitable for such apprenticeship. The engagement of the Pupil Teacher is for 5 years. The stipend commences at £10 per annum, and rises by £2 10s. per annum to £20. On the fulfilment of the specified condition, the Master or Mistress by whom these Pupil Teachers have been instructed and trained, are paid the sum of £5 for one, £9 for two, £12 for three, and £3 per annum for every additional apprentice. If there be an Infant School, under a certificated or registered teacher, it stands upon the same footing as a Girls' School in its claim for Pupil Teachers. If an Infant School not under a certificated or registered teacher, be held in part of the same building as a Girls' School under such a Teacher, the attendance in the Infant School may be reckoned with reference to the number of Pupil Teachers who may be apprenticed to the Mistress of the Girls' School. In such cases the Pupil Teachers are expected to serve by turns in the Girls' or Infants' Schools. There must be a separate Mistress of the Infant School, and she must be reported to be a good school keeper, and able to superintend and to direct the Pupil Teachers while employed in her department. Their instruction out of school hours is to be given wholly by the Mistress of the Girl's School, who must be either certificated or registered. VI. Assistant Teachers. If preferred to Pupil Teachers, salaries are provided for Assistant Teachers but only under a certificated Master or Mistress: £25 per annum for Males, £20 for Females. Assistant Teachers must have been Pupil Teachers, who have duly completed their apprenticeship. One Assistant Teacher is allowed as equivalent to two Pupil Teachers. See Augmentation sheets, Minutes, 1847-8. VII. Registration of Teachers. Teachers who are upwards of 35 years of age, are not required to obtain Certificates in order to qualify their Schools to obtain pupil teachers and the capitation Grants. If they pass a fair examination in the subjects which enter into the pupil teachers course, they are "registered" as competent. Masters who omit the Mathematics required in that course, may nevertheless be "registered" as sufficient to qualify their schools for the capitation grant. The best way to get registered is to attend the Christmas examination at one of the Training Schools under inspection, taking the papers either of the first or second year at the candidate's own discretion. It has often happened that the candidate who has sought registration has obtained a certificate. Separate examinations for registration are sometimes (but not often) held at Easter. The examinations (Registration) embrace Holy Scriptures, Catechism, Liturgy, English History, Geography, Arithme tic, (vulgar and decimal fractions.) Good character and power as a teacher have much consideration given them. The object of the examination is to ascertain sound, even though humble, attainments. See the Scheme for the five examinations for Pupil Teachers, Minutes, 1846. VIII. Capitation Grants. These grants are made to the managers of the Schools towards the general expenses thereof. They are thus paid When 50 children claim the Grant, The Grant is.... Boys 6s. each Girls 5s. each 5s. each 4s. each 4s. each 3s. each Above 50 and under 100. Above 100..... CONDITIONS:-Income of School from all sources must allow 14s. per head for boys, 12s. for girls, for all those children for whom grants are claimed. Attendance of those children to be 176 days, but parts of separate days may be counted towards this number, and if the Master be certificated, boys above 10 years old who attend 176 half days or 88 whole days, may be reckoned. See infra. "Half time." Seven tenths of Income of School from all quarters to be applied to salaries; three fourths of children must pass a satisfactory examination. Accounts and Registers must be kept. Suitable Forms of Registers are published and may be obtained from Messrs. Spottiswoode, Queen's Printers, Printing House Square, Fetter Lane, or at the Diocesan Society's Office, at Wells. Infant Schools are allowed to participate in these Grants. Under a certificated or registered Mistress in a mixed School, these grants are allowed at girls' rates in parishes where the population is under 600. For one year these Grants will be given to Schools where the Master or Mistress " are not prima facie incompetent." The next year the teachers must be certificated or registered. See Minute 1853, and Letters of 20th of August, 1853. IX. Half Time. Capitation Grants allowed for 88 days instead of 176 to boys employed half time in industrial occupation, and where a scheme is approved by the Committee of Council. This does not provide for boys who shall attend school only as they may happen to be spared from work, but there must be more or less of systematic arrangement for the times of their attendance. Letter August, 1855. Memorandum April, 1858. X. Night Schools. For an assistant Master (who is not required to have been a pupil teacher and who may follow any other occupation during the day) a Government Grant not exceeding £10, nor less than £5, is allowed, where 20 children attend for 60 days. Fees paid by scholars must in gross equal or exceed Government Grants. The night School must be under the same managers as a day School under inspection. Teachers must be above 20 and under 40 years of age, and must produce certificates of character and aptitude for teaching. See Letter, May, 1855. U Where a night School is added to a day School, and both are managed by the same teacher, an additional number of assistants (quondam Pupil Teachers) is allowed. A Schoolmaster however, who has to instruct pupil teachers out of school hours, is not allowed to be charged with a night School also, unless he can be relieved either from the morning or afternoon School. Such relief may be afforded either by an assistant (quondam Pupil Teacher) or by a second Master, (the Committee of Council would pay an Augmentation Grant on the usual terms to such a second master if he were certificated) or, in day Schools attended by less than 100 scholars, by taking the younger boys during the afternoons into the girl's School, and leaving the Master only the elder boys as an industrial class. XI. Industrial Schools. The Committee of Council make grants towards the erection of permanent buildings for these schools. Their Lordships also make grants towards establishing, in connection with existing schools, field gardens and workshops for boys, and kitchens, washhouses, and bakehouses for girls. Their grants are voted First. Towards paying the rent, not exceeding one half of it. Secondly. Purchasing tools in the first year, not exceeding one-third of the total cost. Thirdly. Remunerating the industrial superintendent. If the superintendent be the schoolmaster, he may receive 2s. 6d. per industrial scholar. If the managers retain special instructors in industry, they (the managers) are allowed 5s. per industrial scholar towards the salaries. XII. Book Grants. Grants of books and maps are made by the Committee of Council from a very extensive catalogue, and on terms to reduce their cost to the schools to little more than forty per cent. on the retail price. No applications entertained for less than £3 of books, &c. See Minute, December, 1848.—Books, maps, and plans, explanatory circular. XIII. Training Teachers. Pupil teachers, on the completion of their apprenticeship, are admitted by a competing examination into Training Colleges as Queen's Scholars. The Committee of Council grant towards the College expenses of each Queen's Scholar £23 per annum for males, and £17 for females, and in aid of their personal expenses, to the young persons themselves. See Minute, July 14, 1855. Pupil teachers who, at the end of their apprenticeship, serve for three years as assistants in schools under inspection, may obtain Queen's Scholarships without competing for them. So also may certificated masters who have not been trained, and are anxious in this way to improve themselves. Any person upwards of 18 years old, may be presented by the managers of a Training School as a competitor for a Queen's Scholarship. Only a limited number of admissions (10 per cent) are given for competitors who have not been pupil teachers. The privilege however is very important to untrained and uncertificated teachers, who have thus the means of bringing themselves up to the improved standard of their profession. Further Grants are made for the support of Training Schools in proportion to the success with which the students pass their annual examinations before the Inspector. XIV. Pensions. Retiring Pensions are granted by the Committee of Council on certain conditions, to any School Master or Mistress who has served in an elementary School for not less than 15 years, during 7 at least of which the School must have been under inspection, and is rendered incapable by age or infirmity of continuing to teach a School efficiently. A RHYME FOR THE PUPIL. "If the spring put forth no verdure, in summer there will be no blossom, in autumn no fruit; so if youth be trifled away, it renders manhood contemptible, and old age miserable." Golden hopes and sunny prospects But 'tis wise that e'en the young one For the after life's adorning. Have you read of great and good men Till e'en round their solemn death bed When the glorious sun is gone? Would you tread their honoured footsteps? Treasured in the hearts of men; Now's the time to put the seed in, For the God-like after toil. Bend the mind while yet 'tis pliant, Loving much and praying oft. Never soareth far aloft. Would you have your sun set golden As your youth is full of joy? PLEASURE FOR A CHILD.-Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may again bloom forth. Does not almost every body remember some kind-hearted man who showed him a kindness in the quiet days of his childhood? The writer of this recollects himself, at this moment, as a barefooted lad, standing at the wooden fence of a poor little garden in his native village; with longing eyes he gazed on the flowers which were blooming there quietly in the brightness of a Sunday morning. The possessor came forth from his little cottage; he was a woodcutter by trade, and spent the whole week at work in the woods. He was come into the garden to gather flowers to stick in his coat when he went to church. He saw the boy, and breaking off the most beautiful of his carnations, which was streaked with red and white, he gave it to him. Neither the giver nor the receiver spoke a word, and with bounding steps the boy ran home; and now here at a distance from that home, after so many events of so many years, the feeling of gratitude which agitated the breast of that boy expresses itself on paper. The carnation has long since withered, but it now blooms afresh. -Douglas Jerrold. Notes of A System of Physical Geography. By D. M. Warren. Pp. 91. London. Sampson Low. Philadelphia: Cowperthwait. 1857. HIS book appears to contain a vast deal of valuable information. The author has spared himself no pains in the preparation of the work, and has "obtained aid from the investigations of Lieut. Manry" for his article on the Ocean. To Professor Coffin he is indebted for great part of his information on the Winds of the Northern Hemisphere. “Dr. Kane has furnished the information by which he has been enabled to designate on the map the location of his winter quarters, and the nearest point to the North Pole, attained by his recent expedition."-Mr. Warren has been aided also by Mr. Arthur Sumner and Mr. Bartlett. The maps, which are well executed, were drawn by Mr. James Young; and the engravings, which are carefully and well done, are from original designs by Mr. George White. The work is divided into five parts-Geology, Hydrography, Meteorology, Organic Life, and Physical Geography of the United States. We think it will prove a very useful book for teachers: it contains a variety of questions at the foot of each page, on the information to be derived from each lesson or chapter. We cannot conclude our notice of this work without expressing some degree of pleasure at the feelings and expressions used at the close of the preface: :-"Much care has been taken to test the accuracy of every statement; but should any errors be discovered, the author will gratefully acknowledge the kindness of his friends who may furnish him with the information by which they may be corrected." The Annals of England. Vol. III. Pp. 428. London and Oxford: Parker. 1857. THIS is the third and the concluding volume of this useful epitome of English History. We regret much that it is not extended beyond the reign of Queen Anne, and we cannot agree with the author in deeming it "advisable to close this work with the accession of the House of Brunswick, which was the practical assertion of principles recognised as constitutional, though long neglected at the Revolution of 1688." Many of the notes and illustrations are both valuable and interesting, and we should be truly glad to see the book carried up to the present period of English History. Natural Philosophy, for Schools. By Dionysius Lardner, D.C.L. Pp. 241. London: Walton and Maberly. 1857. THIS book is intended to "supply the want felt by a large number of teachers in public and private schools, of a class book for junior students." |