The aid grant is based on the average attendance of scholars, but is devised to give relatively greater amounts to areas of low rateable value. The formula for its distribution may be said to be the produce of a penny rate

3s. 4d. (10s, minusnumber of children in average attendance The other sources of income are relatively insignificant and will not be further detailed.

The expenditure falls under five main heads: (1) loan-charges, that is the annual charges for interest on, and repayment of loans raised for, the provision of school buildings, playgrounds, furniture, apparatus, and other equipment. They amount on the average to twelve per cent. of the total expenditure on elementary education; (2) teachers' salaries. This is the main expenditure of local authorities. It amounts to 64.5 per cent. of the whole, thus falling short by ten per cent. of the proportion which is considered to be correct by many American educators; (3) other expenses of maintenance, which amount to sixteen per cent. of the total expenditure; (4) school medical service, an expenditure which is rising very rapidly and now absorbs three per cent. of the total money expended on elementary education; (5) administration and other expenses, which amount to 6.4 per cent. There is no doubt these could be materially reduced without lowering the efficiency of education as a whole.

From the foregoing account enough will have been gathered to show the urgency of reform. A departmental committee appointed by Parliament has investigated the problem and presented its report. The report recommends largely increased contributions from government towards the expenses of local authorities and a thorough recasting of the system of the grants for elementary education. It is recommended that the annual, fee, and aid grants, the grants for cookery, laundry, handicraft, etc., the grants to schools for blind, deaf, and epileptic children, and the special grant of £350,000 to necessitous areas be abolished, and that for these grants a block grant of 36s. od. per child in average attendance, plus two-fifths of the total net expenditure, less the produce of a 7d. rate be substituted.

While these proposed reforms undoubtedly mark a great advance on the existing system of grants they suffer from two serious drawbacks. The grants are based on expenditure, no matter for what the expenditure is made, whether beneficial or otherwise. Secondly, there is only indirect encouragement for local authorities to secure competent teachers and wholesome,

hygienic school buildings. There should therefore be instituted some check on possible wasteful expenditures, and positive encouragement of beneficial expenditures, even if they are costly, should certainly be given.

V. TRAINING OF ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

Teacher-training naturally divides itself into two parts-the academic preparation and the subsequent professional training. Since modern times more and more emphasis is being placed on the soundness of the academic preparation, it is not unusual to find elementary teachers possessed of a university degree. The professional training is also changing its character. Apprenticeship copied from the industrial world, with imitation as its method, is giving way to the laboratory method of training, where the psychological principles taught in the normal school are made both vital and real in the demonstration and practising schools which are attached to it.

These two trends are admirably illustrated in the development of teacher-training in England. When first introduced at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Lancaster and Bell, the training consisted in giving monitors, as they were called, a little instruction in subjects and methods which they immediately put to service in the classroom. The underlying psychology was fundamentally false. Education, according to these leaders, consisted in pouring information from one person into another. Anybody, therefore, with a slightly superior stock of information could teach. No attempt was made to encourage the monitors, mostly younger than fifteen years of age, to look forward to teaching as a career, and soon the system proved quite inadequate.

The next forward step was the introduction of the pupil-teacher system to replace the discredited monitorial system. But the defects remained, although in a much less exaggerated form. The central idea of pupil-teachership, which has persisted from 1840 to the present day, and has therefore exerted a profound influence on English education, was apprenticeship to a master for a period of years. The master of a school selected from among the older boys one who showed promise of making a good teacher. This boy was indentured for five years and learned the art of teaching from observation and faithful imitation of his mentor. He got very little salary, but to offset this he received free tuition from his master, either in the evening or early morning before school.

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At the conclusion of his apprenticeship he frequently passed on to a training college (normal school) and remained there for two years. This system was so well established by 1846 that the government felt themselves justified in supporting it by grants both to the pupil-teachers themselves and to their masters. Scholarships were also provided for pupil-teachers during their period of attendance at a training college.

Pupil-teachership still survives. The pupil-teachers are no longer indentured to a master, but to an education committee. The period of apprenticeship has been reduced, step by step, from five to two years (except in rural districts where it may. still be four years), while the age of entrance has been gradually raised from thirteen to sixteen years.

No doubt the system of pupil-teachership was intended as a makeshift to be abolished as soon as a sufficient supply of teachers became available. But the system persisted in spite of its obvious limitations. No person in the most receptive period of his life could combine salaried employment and education without disastrous results to the latter. The chief drawback, however, was in the tuition the candidates received. The masters under whom they served were for the most part badly educated; they lacked the broad outlook of the scholar. And so a vicious circle was established. Matthew Arnold in his report for 1852 felt constrained to remark upon" the utter disproportion between the great amount of positive information and the low degree of mental culture and intelligence they (the pupil-teachers) exhibit."

To remedy this unsatisfactory state of affairs "centre classes" were established in 1874 where the pupil-teachers from a local area were collected and instructed. The movement spread rapidly and pupil-teachers spent a decreasing amount of their time in teaching and an increasing amount in securing a wider academic training. Out of these centre classes "pupil-teacher centres developed in the last nineties. But newer ideals of training were abroad and the whole system of pupil-teachership was regarded with suspicion by the Education Department. This attitude received strong encouragement from a minority report of the Cross Commission, 1888, and from a departmental committee which studied the question between 1896 and 1898. The latter reported: "We think it extremely desirable that all intending teachers should pass through a secondary school for the completion of their ordinary education. . . . The preparation of young teachers can and ought to approximate more

closely to the liberal methods and studies which would help to bring them to the same level as the best scholars of secondary schools." This committee also looked forward to the time when the centres would be converted into well-staffed and properly equipped secondary schools "where, although perhaps intending teachers may be in the majority, they will have ampler time for their studies and will be instructed side by side with pupils who have other careers in view."

Subsequent legislation has been designed to carry out these proposals. In 1903 regulations were issued which secured for the pupil-teacher a secondary education to sixteen years of age. Since 1905 the system of preliminary training of teachers approved by the Board of Education has been that known as the bursar and student-teacher system. The bursar continues his secondary education from sixteen to seventeen years of age by aid of a bursary grant. At seventeen he becomes a student-teacher and attends an elementary school for one year in order to get an insight into the practical working of a school and some practice in the art of teaching.

Both systems, the pupil-teacher system and the bursarstudent-teacher system, are in operation at the pesent time. In general, the pupil-teacher system operates only in rural districts; urban centres provide themselves with teachers exclusively by the newer plan of bursars and student-teachers.

Preliminary Training of Teachers.-The training which a candidate for the teaching profession receives prior to entry into a training college is technically known as the preliminary training. The education given to pupil-teachers, bursars, and studentteachers falls therefore under this head.

Pupil-teachers.-Pupil-teachers, as we have seen, are boys and girls who are receiving training in teaching in an elementary school together with some approved instruction in elementary subjects. Before selection they must be certified to be healthy, of good character, and free from personal defects. The professional training is given by the head-teacher of the school to which they are attached and consists of teaching, observation of teaching, and study of school management. No professional training is given in the first of the two years of the course and in the second (seventeen to eighteen years) not more than onehalf the time may be so employed. The academic training may be given by a head-teacher (in rural schools), in a pupil-teacher centre, or jointly by the head-teacher and the teachers of central

classes. The aim is to give a sound secondary education, consequently individual instruction by the head-teacher is only recognised when no centre is available. At the end of apprenticeship pupil-teachers sit for an examination, success in which entitles them to enter a training college. The whole system of pupil-teacher training is encouraged by a number of government grants which are sufficiently generous to cover the whole of the cost.

Bursars.-Bursars are intending teachers who receive bursaries to cover the cost of an additional year of secondary education between sixteen and seventeen years of age. Their training, therefore, unlike that of pupil-teachers, is entirely academic. They cannot be distinguished from the ordinary pupils having other careers in view. At the end of their year of recognition bursars pass one of the many examinations qualifying for entrance to a training college. They may then pass directly into a training college from the secondary school, or they may, as they usually do, become student-teachers. Maintenance and travelling allowances, as well as free tuition, are provided by government grants. Student-teachers.-The aim of the student-teacher year of training, which normally follows a bursar year, but may follow a completed course of secondary education, is to provide an opportunity for getting a practical acquaintance with the working of a school. Not all the student-teachers' time is employed in teaching or in observation of teaching; the local education authority employing them must provide facilities whereby their general education is continued so far as circumstances permit. They may be recognised as a component part of the teaching staff of an elementary school, in each case counting, according to the Board's scale, for a maximum of twenty children in average attendance. The more progressive local authorities do not avail themselves of this permission. At the end of the year of service they may either enter a training college for further professional preparation, or they may continue to teach in the capacity of an uncertificated teacher. No grants are paid by the Board on their account, but they usually receive a low rate of remuneration from the local authority employing them.

Training Colleges.-The name given in England to the institution designed "for giving instruction in the principles and practice of teaching to persons who are preparing to become certificated teachers in public elementary schools, and for supplementing their education so far as may be necessary" is that of