ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 83 
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iraw up their own by-laws, subsequently sanctioned ‘by the Educational Department, 
fixing the standard both of half-time attendance, and exemption from school, which vary 
in different parts of the country. 
After the passing of the Act of 1870, the Educational Department retained its former 
powers over voluntary schools, and was by the Act endowed with the same in regard to 
hoard schools ; and in addition it exercises considerable control over school boards, 
The Education Act left managers entirely free to give or not to give religious instruction 
n their schools. Under school boards such teaching must be wholly undenominational. 
Voluntary managers, as a matter of course, give instruction according to their own 
riews. In all schools, both board and voluntary, ¢ the conscience clause ” which per- 
nits parents to withdraw their children from religious instruction must be strictly 
>beyed, but I believe they rarely avail themselves of this permission. 
School boards are empowered to establish evening classes. The scholars must, if 
ander fourteen years of age, have passed the prescribed standard of exemption in the 
ay school. Beyond that age they can of course attend without having passed any 
standard at all, but should they be more than twenty-one, of whom there is a consider- 
able number attending these classes, they do not earn any grant from the government. 
[ believe evening classes are in active operation all over the country. The curriculum 
is much the same as in the day school, except that all the scholars who have passed the 
fourth standard need not be again examined in the three Rs, but may devote their time 
to class and specific subjects, such as geography, history. French, drawing, mechanics. 
manual training, cookery, ete. 
Our schools are generally divided into three departments, infants (both sexes), boys 
and girls, but there are many in which boys and girls receive their instruction together. 
These are called mixed schools. There are a few attached to some schools to which 
shildren of both sexes are drafted when they quit the infants’ department, and remain 
together until having passed, in some schools the second, in others the third standard, 
they go to the senior boys’ and girls’ departments. These are called junior mixed. 
There are also some schools called higher grade, in which the upper standards are 
divided into smaller classes than in the ordinary schools where the pupils study a 
greater variety of “ specific ” subjects. 
In 1891 the Free Education Act passed, permitting managers of schools, both board 
and voluntary, to abolish fees altogether, and offering in their stead a grant of ten 
shillings per head on average attendance. This act came into force on September 1st, 
1891, and up to the present date no reports have yet been issued by the Department on 
the extent to which it has been adopted. 
Improvement in the curriculum of elementary education has made great strides dur- 
ing the last few years. The almost exclusively intellectual training boys used to 
receive after quitting the infant department created in them a dislike to hard labor; 
the comparatively well-to-do desired to become clerks, when it would have been better 
for them to become high-class artisans, while those who from family circumstances had 
been obliged to leave school at an early age could become little else than errand-boys. 
It was therefore essential to encourage a taste for skilled hand labor.* With this end 
it was determined that the hand and the eye should be trained. The Education Depart- 
nent consequently introduced subjects into their codes which supply such training. 
The lads who have been first taught to be skillful in the cutting out of paper, and the 
making of articles in cardboard, enter the manual training class, where they learn the 
ase of tools by making different articles in wood. This scheme, beginning with paper- 
work and leading to wood-work, was formulated and introduced into the schools of the 
board by our senior inspector, Mr. George Ricks. 
* Girls fared in this respect better than boys, they had always their needlework ; and cooking has been 
a subject of instruction in many schools for several years.