Circular to Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, explanatory of foregoing SIR, and uncertified re The inspection of reformatories will be arranged upon the same plan as formatories. that of common elementary schools, i.e., a certain month will be fixed for the Inspector's visit, and all annual grants (except those under Section 4 of the Minute) will be paid for years ending at that date. The institutions to be inspected will fall into two classes. There will be 1. Those institutions which are conducted upon a considerable scale, and which are recognized by the Secretary of State in pursuance of Acts of Parliament. But there will also be 5. A large number of smaller institutions which now, under the names of asylums, homes, refuges, ragged schools, and the like, attempt, with varying degrees of completeness, to effect the object proposed by the Minute. Both classes of institutions (the larger and the smaller) may share equally in the following forms of aid :-They may receive half the rent; one third of the cost of tools, books, and raw materials of labour; one-half of the salaries; and an annual capitation-grant upon every child who is provided with food as well as instruction, and who is not otherwise paid for by the Treasury. The larger and certified institutions will however enjoy this further pririlege, that, they may receive candidates, from certain specified classes, for training as masters, and may be paid on their account such a sum as nearly corresponds to the allowance for a Queen's scholar in a normal college of the ordinary kind. in training. The system of examination and the course of instruction proper for an Candidates ordinary normal college would be unsuited to a reformatory. In abandoning, therefore, any such requisition, it has been an object to specify those classes of candidates who have given proof that they already possess a fair amount of intellectual acquirements, as well as some familiarity with the ordinary routine of school-keeping. The reception of such candidates into training will require no addition to the staff for their own instruction; occasional lectures, and examinations by the principal, will suffice to keep up their knowledge; and they will be useful assistants to the ordinary officers of the institution, at the same time that they are qualifying themselves for independent employment. In accordance with this view, the allowance which, in the case of a Queen's scholar, is divided between his own bursary and the grant made to the college, for his examination at the end of each year, is in the present instance consolidated. Her Majesty's Inspectors, at their annual visits, will report upon the qualifications and ability of the candidates in training, but the candidates will not be further subjected to a general examination in the same manner as students in ordinary normal colleges. As the number of institutions in which masters can be suitably trained is not likely to be large, the special payments allowable under the fourth Section of the Minute will be separated entirely from the rest which are to be issued on the annual report of the Inspectors. It is not supposed by their Lordships that the attainment implied by the Intellectual definition of the classes from which the choice of candidates for training an instrudiscipline as must be made constitute all that is wanted in a reformatory teacher. Their ment of reLordships do consider, however, that there is a very close connexion between formation. the peculiar qualifications of such a teacher and the attainments in question. as means through which those qualifications may operate with increased effect. If intellectual instruction ought to occupy any place at all in the reformatory process, it ought to be good as far as it goes. Teachers employed in reformatories. Criminal boys often possess sharpness and cunning, but this is a very different thing from acquiring a power of sustained attention and a methodical application of the mind. It is in the inculcation of these last-mentioned habits that intellectual discipline becomes identical with moral discipline of a high order. The humbleness of the form and the limited degree in which intellectual instruction may be imparted do not alter this truth, nor dispense with the necessity for an able teacher. In more than one reformatory which has been inspected, the intellectual instruction is not only limited but bad. School-lessons should take their turn with hard bodily labour, but should never be allowed to supersede it as the staple of each reformatory institution. Grants under the fifth section of the Minute are not confined to those masters and assistants who have been trained, nor are they offered in the way of augmentation. The managers will receive half the sums which they return as the salaries agreed to be paid; but, so long as those salaries are paid, the grants may be carried to the general account of the school. Their Lordships reserve to themselves discretion to determine whether any particular salary, by its amount or otherwise, falls fairly within the scope of the Minute. You will observe that the Government leaves the choice of teachers absolutely to the managers, interposing no test whatever, except the Inspector's annual report upon certain specified points. According to the organization adopted in each reformatory, the master, for whose salary allowance is made, may or may not be the principal teacher in school. If he is not, the school-teacher may be counted among the assistants in claiming a grant, according to the number of instructors admissible under the Minute. The principal officer ought in all cases to be well enough instructed to be able to control, and to be responsible for, the work of the school-room. The literary ability of a teacher may be regarded as sufficient if the Inspector is satisfied that the boys under his charge learn to read, write, and cipher, in such a manner as to acquire the practical command of those arts in earning their bread and making their way in the world. A boy who reads with difficulty and without intelligence, who writes imperfectly and spells ill, who cannot readily apply the rules of arithmetic to a common transaction of the shop or of wages, might as well, for most practical purposes, be unable to read, write, or cipher at all. You should apply this test rigorously in examining all such boys as are on the eve of leaving the school. In the same way as to religious knowledge, you should endeavour to ascertain that the doctrines and maxims of Christianity are taught in such a manner as to be likely to become motives and rules of conduct. In the same spirit you will bear in mind that no oral delivery of moral lessons can be so effective as that which results from daily practice. You will not, therefore, allow any general professions to weigh against the evidence which a school, or workshop, may present in itself of a want of order, obedience, and cleanliness. A disobedient, dirty, ill-conditioned lad is not to be talked out of those habits, but can only be cured by being obliged to live in daily and hourly contact with the practical opposites of them. With regard to the rule which confines the capitation grant to those whom capi- children who are― Inmates on tation grant is allowed must be fed, not paid for by Treasury, years of age, and under the former test is adopted, because experience seems to show that, without twenty-one the offer of food, the lowest part of the juvenile population cannot be reached by instruction, and because, while this circumstance renders ragged or reformatory schools more costly than others, it also serves to distinguish them broadly from common elementary day schools. You will be careful on all occasions to inquire and report whether the reformatory is confined to the most degraded class of children. It has been known to happen that a ragged school, by the offer of food, has emptied a neighbouring day school, where the parents of the children were previously paying for their instruction; such a result is an unmixed evil. No positive rule can supply the place of personal vigilance and good faith, on the part of the managers, in guarding against such abuses. It is to be hoped that, if proper pains be taken to explain the nature of these schools, few decent parents, however poor, will be so wanting in honest pride as to be tempted to send their children to them. The relief of want should not be 'confounded with the remedy for vice and crime. The honest children of honest parents should no more be brought to reformatories for education than to hospitals for food. The Committee of Council considered the question whether lodging as well as food should be taken into account, and decided in the negative, except so far as the allowance towards rent may suffice to meet the cost of dormitories. There are many excellent institutions in which the inmates are not lodged; and in some others, where they are lodged, it would have been desirable to secure much more complete premises and arrangements for classification, before undertaking any such charge. You will carefully examine and report upon the day-rooms, dormitories, and offices, no less than the school-rooms and workshops, so as to form an opinion of the entire life of the inmates, and of the habits likely to result from it. The capitation grant is not allowed on those children who are paid for by the Treasury, because the Act 17 & 18 Vict., cap. 86., sect. 3., enables the Lords of the Treasury to make a sufficient allowance for general care and maintenance in a single sum. Their Lordships, following the analogy of the Act 17 & 18 Vict., cap. 86., sect. 2., have decided that no inmates of ragged or reformatory schools, who are above twenty-one years of age, are to be reckoned in calculating such allowances from the education grant as depend upon the number of inmates. Their Lordships do not regard it as advisable to associate persons who have reached mature years in crime with youths in one and the same reformatory. My Lords intend, as a general rule, to refer those institutions in England and Wales which fall exclusively under the Minute of 2 June 1856 to such of Her Majesty's Inspectors as are charged with the inspection of Workhouse schools. I have the honor to be, &c. To Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. (Signed) R. R. W. LINGEN. Further Circular to Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, explanatory of Minute dated 2 June 1856, as regards aid towards payment of Rent for Reformatories. SIR, Education Department, 21 November 1856. IN continuation of the instructions with which you have already been furnished respecting the administration of the Minute dated 2 June 1856, for the promotion of reformatory schools, I am directed by the Committee of Council on Education to request your attention to certain questions which have arisen under that part of the Minute which offers an allowance equal to half the rent of the premises. The Committee ruled that no grant should be made for building reformatories. The experimental state of the whole subject of preventive and reformatory discipline afforded a sufficient reason for not sinking large sums of public money at once in undertakings which might have to be abandoned. 'The rent contemplated by the Minute is such as a bona fide tenant pays to a landlord, in the ordinary course of taking and letting a house. But, in the application of this principle, two cases occur which are not free from difficulty. 1. The proprietors of suitable premises allow them to be occupied as reformatories without exacting the rent which those same premises might otherwise be made to yield. 2. Premises have been acquired, and settled in permanent trust, for which, although no rent is paid, and no one has the right to claim any, nevertheless the occupation of them as reformatories represents from year to year a certain value, under one of those heads to which the Minute purports to appropriate assistance. The difficulty felt in departing from the literal sense of the Minute consists in the fact that, while an actual rent will naturally be kept as low as the managers can contrive to make it, an estimated or nominal rent will be subject to an opposite tendency, inasmuch as the proportion of it, which may be recovered under the Minute, is not part of any positive expenditure, but is simply so much added to the general funds. The experience of this Department proves incontestably that neither managers, nor even professional surveyors, confine themselves to market value in making estimates under such circumstances. The charitable object is held to excuse a degree of laxity which it is very difficult to control by any official check. Their Lordships, looking at all the circumstances of the case, and wishing to interpret the Minute as liberally as is consistent with a bona fide observance of the limitations which it imposes, have agreed to the following rules of practice: 1. Where the premises are NOT conveyed in trust, the managers can only obtain the allowance for rent by showing that they are bound under some lease, or valid legal agreement, to pay a specific amount; that such amount is annually paid by the treasurer, and that it duly appears in his accounts. My Lords would consider it to be a reason for not allowing half the rent that the lessor had entered into any binding agreement to return it, inasmuch as such a step would relieve the managers from those prudential considerations which might otherwise induce them to limit the amount, as long as the lessor was at liberty to change his mind, or as long as his interest was liable to pass into other hands. What the lessor may choose to do with the rent which he receives from time to time is his own concern only. 2. Where the premises ARE held in permanent trust, and cannot become the subject of any claim for rent, no estimated allowance will be made. The Minutes of the Committee of Council have never been allowed to have a retrospective force. Those promoters of schools who built them before 1833 have not been relieved by the subsequent Parliamentary grants from any part of the outlay which they had incurred; nor have such as performed the same public work between 1833 and 1853 derived any benefit from the more ample grants which have been available since the latter date. The managers who have acquired a reformatory in absolute possession, and so cannot now obtain the allowance for rent, are in no worse position than the persons just namned, and cannot be differently treated. I have the honor to be, &c. To Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. R. R. W. LINGEN. 1 Form of Report, by Her Majesty's Inspectors, on Schools aided under the Minute of 2 June 1856.—IX. R. N.B. This form is to be filled up, as far as the middle of the 4th page, before the arrival of H.M. Inspector, and is to be delivered to him on his arrival. REPORT ON REFORMATORY SCHOOL, c. Rent (amount, to whom paid, and whether under any lease or written If there has been a change of teacher during the year preceding the date fixed for the inspection, enter the name of each teacher, with the full annual rate of salary and other particulars opposite to it; and add, in a note, the exact date at which the former teacher quitted his charge. Engaged in instructing. Number of Hours per Week. Number of Persons. |