Special reports on educational subjects, 1896-7.

Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Special reports on educational subjects, 1896-7. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/764 (page 13)
    examination in science of students in training colleges. Grants for instruction in drawing are made by the Department to public elementary schools, and drawing has (since 1890) been compul- sory for all boys in such schools (except infant schools) in England and Wales. The amount of grants paid under various heads by the Department to public elementary schools and training colleges during the years 1871-95 are stated on page 23. The recognition, as Organised Science Schools, of schools providing methodical or systematic instruction in science has, since 1872, given great encouragement to scientific teaching, and the list of these schools now includes many higher grade elemen- tary schools, The curriculum of the Organised Science Schools was materially altered by new regulations in 1895. (For further details of the history of the Department reference should be made to the Calendar, History, and General Summary of the Regulations of the Department of Science and Art.) III.—School Boards, School Attendance Committees,. and Byelaws. By the Elementary Education Act, 1870, school boards could be formed for the following school districts : for the metropolis, for all municipal boroughs except Oxford, for the district of the local board of Oxford, and for all parishes not included in any of the above-mentioned districts. The formation of the School Board for London was ordered by the Act; and, in all other dis- tricts, boards could be formed (1) voluntarily, i.e., on the application of the proper authority, the Education Department might cause a board to be formed for the district; or (2) com- pulsorily, i.e., where there was a deficiency of school accommo- dation in any district, or the closing of a school would cause such deficiency, the Education Department might, after publishing proper notices if so required, order the district to elect a board. Power was also given to the Education Department to unite districts, and to make one school district contribute to another for educational purposes. In addition to their duties of supplying and maintaining school accommodation for the district, the boards, whether elected voluntarily or compulsorily, were enabled to make byelaws for compelling children to attend school; but there was no power given to the Education Department to make boards frame byelaws, and without byelaws there were no means of making the children attend the schools which were provided for them. In one of the tables given below will be seen, for each year, the total population under the jurisdiction of boards and the total population subject to byelaws. It must be distinctly borne in mind that not only was there no compulsion on the part of parents to send their children to school in districts where