we can merely say that there is undoubtedly a large amount of work ranking as Secondary performed by State-aided schools. This we know from other sources to be the fact, and it is such an important one that the exact extent of it should be carefully ascertained.1

Besides higher class Public and Endowed Schools and State-aided Schools supplying Secondary Education, as has been stated, mention may, in passing, be made of a new type of school in recent years, the Higher Grade School. It is the direct creation of Government, and is designed to continue the work of the Elementary School in the direction of modern studies, including English, Modern Languages and Science, rather than on the literary lines which lead to the University. In Higher Grade Schools or Departments, which number 34, there are 3,518 pupils, all, with the exception of 67, over the age of thirteen; the average attendance reaches

1 This morning's paper records, inter alia, at a country village school in the North of Scotland, five Higher Grade Leaving Certificates (English, Latin, Greek, French and Mathematics) obtained by one pupil—a girl. This is rare, but perhaps not unprecedented.

the very satisfactory total of 3,270. The education of the Higher Grade School leads by a natural transition to the Technical College.

C.-THE UNIVERSITIES.

The Universities are named, not in order to a discussion of them, but for the sake of completeness. A system-which is what we have in view-must take cognisance of the top no less than of the bottom. The Universities are four in number, and such they are bound to remain. The distribution of population has confirmed the forecast of our ancestors. While other countries are multiplying their higher seats of learning to meet the wants of new centres of population, we are trying to adjust our Universities to altered conditions of civilisation, to broaden and modernise the curriculum and to afford such opportunities to special individual effort as shall keep us abreast, or, if possible, ahead of what is being done elsewhere in the same direction. In one instance, it is true, the industrial centre of population of more recent growth and the ancient seat of learning stand at some distance from one another; but

steam and engineering have bridged the gap, and the fusion may be regarded as now virtu. ally complete.

The expansion of scientific investigation in every field of industry and commerce has been so great and rapid that the somewhat inelastic machinery of the University has barely kept pace with it. Added to this there are branches of study which the University can never provide for so well as institutions differently constituted. The University is not, and never was, a school of universal learning. From these and other causes there has made its appearance in recent years an institution of intermediate status between Secondary School and University. It is more common in England than in Scotland. It is the Technical School or College, or Higher Commercial College. There are two or three of them in Scotland, but these are rather offshoots and extensions of Secondary Schools than independent establishments, at least as yet.

In connection with these, and in connection with many other schools, Secondary and Elementary, a great deal of most useful work

is now being done in Evening Classes. No special mention has been made of this, nor of the distinctively scientific side of instruction in the schools, because we are here dealing with institutions of different grades rather than with the details of the instruction they afford. But the subject is in itself of immense and ever-growing importance. The Continuation Classes number their pupils, chiefly industrial and commercial workers, by tens of thousands, and yet there is room, as we shall see.

But, meantime, enough has been said about institutions and their history.

Elementary, [Higher Grade], Secondary School, [Technical College], University, form a series, but with each covering in part the same ground as its nearest neighbour or neighbours, this feature being most conspicuous and least avoidable in the case of Elementary and Secondary.

Private enterprise is still in evidence in the field of Scotch Education, but to a greatly diminished extent since 1872. As public administration has become more efficient, the sphere of private effort has been narrowed.

There are still a few excellent private schools, and there are a few semi-public institutions which take high rank among our educational agencies. They cover both Elementary and Secondary Education, but are more prominent in the latter.

In the next chapter I will say a few words about governing bodies and funds.