For the successful working of the institution whose scope is thus defined

It would be necessary [says Mr. Sadler] to strengthen the present staff of masters, and to make a position on the staff of the institute one which would attract men of first-class ability into the service of the school. A good deal was done toward this end by the directors of the institute during Mr. Fletcher's head mastership, but the intellectual vitality and educational power of the school need to be further strengthened. The real efficiency and influence of a school depend upon the talent, the energy, the experienced skill, and the character of its teachers, and therefore no part of the expenditure is more remunerative than that devoted to the maintenance of a very highly qualified staff of masters. This is a matter upon which at the present time great emphasis should be laid, as the inadequacy of the salaries generally given to secondary schoolmasters in England is deterring men of capacity from entering the profession. It would be a national misfortune if at a time when we need an intellectual quickening in our secondary schools there were to be a failure in the supply of the very men who alone can give us what we require. That supply, it is true, is not wholly governed by the rates of salary offered. Many a teacher keeps on under conditions of pecuniary discouragement because he loves his work, because he is fond of boys, and because he desires to serve his generation. But a national system of education, though its greatness is enhanced by zeal and self-devotion, can not subsist on self-sacrifice alone. The economic basis of the teaching profession must be sound if it is to be continuously recruited by men who can uphold its standards and worthily accomplish its work. Now, when we consider the cost of educating a secondary schoolmaster for his profession, and the responsible duties which he is called upon to perform, we shall not deem a salary commencing at £150 per annum, with annual increments of £10 up to £300, an unreasonable minimum for a fully qualified graduate master in a secondary school. A man is soured and is apt to lose his love for his profession when year after year his salary remains far below that which he could have certainly earned in another and not more arduGus calling. Nor does the matter affect himself alone. Discouragement and dissatisfaction in the minds of the teachers have a depressing and hurtful influence upon the vital tone of the school. It is desirable that in a large secondary school of good standing there should be two schemes of salaries—one recognizing the normal need, starting from a fair minimum and rising by periodic (preferably annual) increments to a reasonable maximum which would allow of the maintenance of a family; the other, on a higher scale, applicable to cases of special excellence and ability and brought into operation by the governors on the head master's recommendation when it was thought expedient to secure or to retain the services of a teacher with specially high qualifications for the work of the school.

In this connection, mention should be made of the desirability of giving teachers (and the remark applies as well to women as to men) occasional leave of absence for a term in order that they may see other schools at work and so keep themselves in touch with the advance of educational practice in other parts of the country or in other lands. A teacher is always in danger of getting into a rut. He is apt to fall into routine. His work absorbs him, and rather cuts him off from opportunities of seeing how other teachers, especially those younger than himself, are handling the difficulties with which he and they alike have to contend. A school gains greatly by anything which keeps its teaching staff fresh in mind and interested in improvements in methods of teaching and of school organization. A" grace term," after five years of service in the school, and a somewhat longer leave of absence after ten years of such service, would enable a teacher to widen the range of his professional experience, or to carry out some piece of original research, with great benefit alike to himself and to the school. An arrangement of this kind has been found advantageous in one of the great public schools in England. It is common in America, and it well deserves consideration whether a similar plan would not prove of benefit to the secondary schools of Liverpool.

It is of special interest also to notice that Mr. Sadler has no thought of maintaining this institution on a cheap basis. He warns against—

the attempt to provide secondary education at a cost incompatible with real intellectual efficiency. Yet intellectual efficiency, combined with high personal character, is of vital importance in a system of secondary schools. With

out it they must fail in the very work which they are set to do, and the labor and expense of establishing them would be practically thrown away.

A secondary school for boys [he continues] capable of rendering to Liverpool the kind of service which may fairly be expected from the institute, would be found to cost, in the end (apart from interest on capital charges and from the cost of buildings), about £23 a year per boy in the school. The cost at first would be considerably less, but would rise, with the increments to salaries needed to retain the services of first-rate teachers in full efficiency, to the limit named above. I am aware that this estimate is higher than those usually made, but careful inquiry and calculation have convinced me that the current estimates fall considerably short of the real cost which must be incurred in important city schools if intellectual efficiency is to be secured and maintained.

The following table confirms the view which I have taken of the real cost of good secondary education for boys. It should be noted, however, that the net cost here given includes certain charges for administration and the expenses of scholarships. (At Norwich scholarships are not included.)

The question of the fee to be charged in such a school as that described above next calls for consideration. At present, at the institute, the fees for boys over 11 in the high school amount to 12 guineas a year, and in the commercial school to 6 guineas. The closing of the commercial school would result in large numbers of boys who would otherwise have been sent to that school being placed (greatly to their advantage) in the high school instead. But in view of the additional expense which this would entail upon their parents, it might be thought desirable to strike an average between the present high school and commercial school fees and to charge a fee of 9 guineas a year for the new school. It would be well to have “no extras," except, of course, for private lessons in music or other subjects. Boys entering the school between their tenth and eleventh birthday and intending to remain till their sixteenth might be charged, for the whole of their stay in the school, a reduced fee of 8 guineas a year. This would encourage parents to send their boys for a longer school course. For boys under 10, a junior department would be desirable. The annual school fee in the junior department might be fixed at 6 guineas.

The fees recommended, it will be seen, are not large, but they indicate a policy in respect to secondary education quite unlike that which prevails in our own country. Here the desire is to induce the largest possible number of young people to continue their studies beyond the elementary stage. This is held to be a measure of public safety, a means of raising the level of general intelligence, and of increasing the mental alertness of individuals. These results are also seen to promote industrial aptitudes and power, hence the almost phenomenal increase in the number of our free high schools in recent years. English policy, on the contrary, is directed to the selection of young people of special promise and to their preparation for definite spheres of usefulness. This purpose is manifest throughout Mr. Sadler's reports. He goes, however, beyond many of his countrymen in the recognition of the fact that ability has no social limits, but may be found even among the poorest classes, and he is particular to recommend, both in the Sheffield and the Liverpool reports, an increase of scholarship funds to be awarded by competitive examination, thus enabling. promising young people, irrespective of their social class, to continue their studies in secondary schools. The extended discussion of this policy emphasizes anew the difference between the American and the English conception of secondary education.

It is interesting to note that Mr. Sadler recognizes the need for a manual training school in Liverpool adapted to a class of pupils differing in many respects from those who would naturally enter the typical schools described. The manual training schools, he says, should take boys "at about 13 years of age and keep them in training up to 15 or 16, the latter being the age at which boys may be taken as apprentices in the engineering trades." The scope and course of study suggested for this school are as follows:

It would not be the aim of such a school actually to teach a trade or to serve as a substitute for apprenticeship. Its purpose would be to fit the boys to learn their trade more quickly when the time came by giving them a well-graded preparatory course in practical handwork, combined with a scientific study of the fundamental principles underlying the occupations by which the pupils intended afterwards to earn their living. Mathematics, drawing, and natural science would thus, along with manual training, form an important part of the curriculum. But the school course should also give ample time for the teaching of English (including composition, national history, and literature) in order to kindle the imagination of the boys, to give them an ideal of citizenship, to cultivate in them a love for some masterpieces of the national literature, and to train their power of expressing themselves in good, clear English. It would be a great mistake to narrow down the course of study at a manual training school to shop work and science. The humanities are needed in it as well. Special care should also be given to physical training. The aim of the school would be to turn out a number of keen young fellows, vigorous in body, alert in mind, proud of their country, clever with their hands, with a good hold on mathematics, with some knowledge of scientific method, and fitted to do credit to themselves and to Liverpool in the engineering trades, or in other industries which their skill and trained practical ability might in time do much to promote in the city..

Entrance to the school should be confined to those whose work in the elementary school had proved their fitness to profit by the more advanced work of the manual training school. The course should be so arranged as to allow those boys who wished to stay three years to pass through a graded training extending over that time. Many of the boys, however, would probably leave at the end of the second year. If the week's school work were to amount to thirty hours, the division of time between the various subjects might be somewhat as follows:

Hours weekly.

English (including written and oral composition, national history, literature, and, for part of the course, geography). Mathematics__.

Natural science (physics and chemistry, magnetism and electricity, and a general course in theoretical and applied mechanics). Manual training and drawing

Physical training....

The manual training or workshop course would be correlated with the course in drawing (which should not ignore the artistic side) and with some parts of the instruction in natural science. It might begin, in the first year, with a course in carpentry and joinery, combined with a course in mechanical and freehand drawing. The next year's course, continuing the mechanical and freehand drawing, might include wood turning as preparatory to pattern making work, and the first part of a course in forging and blacksmithing. The latter might be continued in the third year, and be followed by a course in iron-fitting and elementary machine-tool work.

A manual training school of this kind should really be a school with a corporate life of its own, and not merely an aggregate of separate classes. A plain building of simple construction would be the most appropriate for its work, but it would be desirable that the rooms for class work should be well furnished and decorated with good taste.

The difficulty of obtaining suitable teachers for this school is admitted. The danger in this respect, says Mr. Sadler

would be lest the school should fall either into the hands of men who were good at shop work, but had no experience of teaching boys and of organizing school

life, or into the hands of men who knew about school management, but were deficient in their practical knowledge of shop work. What is wanted is a combination of the two kinds of experience.

The suggestion is made that if the education committee venture upon the experiment of establishing the school

they should seek some thoroughly qualified, practical man with a strong interest in and experience of teaching, and after nominating him as head master, to send him to the United States to make a careful study of what is now being done there in the manual training schools. On his return he should be asked to submit a draft plan of work for the school, and inquiry might then be made for suitable members of the teaching staff, the importance of having good English teaching in the school being steadily borne in mind from the first.

Additional recommendations in the report advise means for encouraging and improving private schools which at present provide for about one-third the pupils receiving secondary education in Liverpool, and for strengthening of the upper classes of public elementary schools. If these are adopted the various agencies for “higher" education in Liverpool will be brought within a unified system.

The report is enriched by several appendixes, of which the most important is a "Memorandum by Mr. Cloudesley Brereton on Suggested improvements in the teaching of modern languages in Liverpool." This appendix formulates the conditions for attaining exact and valuable results in the teaching of modern languages, a subject of ever-growing interest to all communities.

Secondary education in London.--The two reports above considered present for the cities to which they relate a more complete statement of the provision for secondary education than is at present available for any other city of England with the exception of London. While in the metropolis no single investigation covering the whole field of education has recently been attempted, the results of several independent investigations made during the past decade enable one to form a pretty clear idea of the provision the city offers for the education of its citizens. From an investigation made in 1892 by Mr. H. Llewellyn Smith, secretary of the National Association for the Promotion of Technical and Secondary Education, it appears that at that date there were in London 36 endowed secondary schools, attended by 12,500 boys, and 10 proprietary or stock company schools, attended by 1,800 boys. The endowed schools are subject to a form of public control through the right of Government to insure that the conditions of the trusts are fulfilled. The proprietary schools also have a semipublic character, being conducted under the auspices of incorporated companies.

In addition to the classes of schools named, there were denominational schools and schools for special classes, such as the sons of missionaries, the sons of poor clergymen, and the like, and above 450 private schools for boys and girls.

According to the results of an investigation published the same year as the above (1892) there were for girls 20 high schools, of which 2 were endowed and the remainder proprietary, having accommodations for 4,950 pupils, and 14 middle-class schools, with an attendance of 3,866 pupils.

It is interesting to compare the statistics of enrollment in the secondary schools of London given above with the estimates presented eleven years later by Mr. Sidney Webb, chairman of the technical education board of London. In his work on London education, published in 1903, Mr. Webb says:

There is a common impression that the public secondary schools of London are few and inefficient. Yet, including only foundations of which the manage

a See Studies in Secondary Education, edited by Arthur D. Acland, M. P., pp. 145-199. See Studies in Secondary Education, chapter on Secondary education in London (girls)." Clara E. Collet.

their classification, but it is fair to assume that the pupils over 14 years of age in grades above the seventh have reached the secondary stage. These pupils in 1904 numbered 5,299.

The information here presented with respect to provision for education above the elementary grade in three great cities of England shows the variety and the peculiarly independent character of the agencies engaged in this work, and further the difficulty of arriving at any fair estimate of the actual amount of such provision in the country as a whole. This it is evident can only be done by special investigations similar to those that have been here reviewed. For convenience of reference, the following statistics show the kind and amount of instruction given in the London board schools under the head of optional branches:

The total, it will be seen, includes many duplications.

The statutes pertaining to the secondary and higher grade elementary schools in the three cities referred to are brought together in the following table, which includes also population and enrollment in elementary schools:

a As indicated in Schoolmaster's Year Book, 1904.
b Also 1,660 in private secondary schools.

The statistics tabulated above present a very incomplete view of the actual number of young people pursuing secondary studies in the three cities included, as private schools are omitted, but on the other hand the table indicates quite clearly the extent to which secondary education has come to some degree at least under public management."

a

Evening schools classed now as secondary have not been included in the table, partly because statistics with reference to them are not complete and partly because they differ from day schools in respect to methods, curricula, and standards. The available statisties with respect to the registration in evening schools in the cities here considered are as follows: