660
EDUCATION
Local Taxation Account Act (Scotland) of 1892, and by the award of leaving certificates and bursaries after the examination of pupils. In Ireland the problem of national education has assumed a shape differing in many ways from that prevailing in other of the United Kingdom. Its present system Ireland. parts owes ^esg to iocaj initiative—either private or municipal—an(i more to the direct action of the Government. The population is more sharply divided in religious profession, at least 75 per cent, being Roman Catholics, about 11 per cent, members of the Anglican Church, and 11 per cent. Presbyterians, chiefly in the province of Ulster; the minor dissenting communities, so numerous in England, being almost unknown. These conditions should be borne in mind in any attempt to estimate the historical development of the Irish system or to compare it with that of Great Britain. In 1831, two years after the enactment of Catholic emancipation, Lord Grey’s Government established a Board of Education composed partly of Roman Catholic and partly of Protestant members. To this body was entrusted the control of all funds which might be annually voted by Parliament for the purpose of erecting schools, visiting and inspecting them, making gratuities to teachers, establishing a model school for the training of teachers, and supplying school-books and necessaries. Before this date grants had been made in aid of the Charter Schools, the Foundling Hospital, and the Kildare Place Society—a body which had been founded in 1811, and had sought to provide a system of schools wherein Catholics and Protestants might be instructed together, and the Bible might be read without note or comment. This society did not wholly succeed in obtaining the co-operation of the heads of either the Catholic or the Established Church. The Commissioners, however, in the earlier stages of their administration endeavoured to obtain such co-operation by means of a system of combined moral and literary instruction, and separate religious instruction for children of different faiths. At first the Board also prepared for general use books of Scripture extracts from the historical portions of the Bible and from the Psalms, the Gospel of St Luke and the Acts of the Apostles; and .for a time the use of such books continued in the schools with the partial approval of the authorities of both Churches. But this compromise ultimately failed. The story of its failure, and of the gradual steps by which the Commissioners have abandoned the attempt to secure a mixed and comprehensive plan and have adopted a practically denominational system, is fully told by Mr Sadler {Special Reports, 189697, p. 211), and is further described in careful detail in a memorandum in the same volume by Mr C. T. Redington, late Resident Commissioner. It must suffice here to refer to the most recent changes, especially to those which have resulted from the Report of the Viceregal Commission of Inquiry into Manual and Practical Instruction, 1897. With regard to the administration of the public grant, there is a fundamental difference between the conditions under which the Irish Commission acts and those which have controlled the English Education Department. This Department does not appoint teachers nor dismiss them, promote them or pay them. It neither builds nor furnishes the schools, nor regulates the duties of the staff, the choice of books, or the course of instruction. It simply makes a grant in aid to local managers, who have full power to supply these things at their discretion. Hence there was no other way open to the central Department to secure the efficiency of a school than by withholding a grant, or graduating it in accordance with the result of examination. But in Ireland the Central Board generally erects the school buildings of the “ vested schools,” it has the power to fix the stipends of teachers, to augment those stipends
for good service, and to make all needful provision for the equipment of the school and for determining the course of instruction. Thus the Board has ample means of securing a good educational equivalent for its outlay. Nevertheless, until recently a considerable portion of the grant paid to teachers was made to depend on the answers given by the scholars when examined individually in each separate subject of a very extensive programme. The Commissioners have lately recommended a considerable modification in the system of distributing the grant. New rules were sanctioned in 1900 providing that teachers should in future be paid {a) a fixed salary, called a grade salary, there being three grades of teachers; (b) an additional salary called continued good service salary, which may be increased triennially; and (c) a capitation grant on the average attendance of the scholars. The teacher’s position in the school, his length of service, and the goodness of his teaching, as attested by the proficiency of the scholars and the reports of the inspectors, are all taken into account in determining the salary of the teachers and their promotion from one grade to a higher. In this way the administration of the funds is calculated to secure efficiency by other means than that of payment by the results of individual examination, a plan now definitely abandoned. Other provisions in the newest regulations of the Board, for increasing the responsibility of local managers, for the preparation of reports of progress, and for giving to parents a more direct interest in the educational welfare of their children, have been very carefully framed in the light of recent experience, and are full of promise for the future. A new department has been created for the promotion of technical instruction, and an active society, for Irish Agricultural Organization, is already trying some valuable and most hopeful experiments in the establishment in the rural districts of creameries, fruit-growing, poultry-yards, and the economy and distribution of farm produce. The estimated population of Ireland being 4,531,051, the returns show that the number of pupils on the rolls of the national schools was 796,163, or more than one-sixth of the population. The number in average daily attendance, however, was 513,852, or only 64’5 per cent, as compared with the number on the rolls. Of the scholars in (a) schools under Roman Catholic teachers exclusively, 192,278, or 94'7 per cent., are Catholics, and 11,103 are Protestants; in (b) schools under Protestant teachers exclusively, 7512, or 9,8 per cent., are Catholics, and 69,240, or 90'2 per cent., are Protestants; and in (c) schools under Catholic and Protestant teachers conjointly, 3818, or 58'8 per cent., are Catholics, and 2672, or 41'2 per cent., are Protestants. The proportion of schools which are specially denominational schools, and are solely attended by Roman Catholic or by Protestant scholars, has steadily though slowly increased, and the last returns show that it reaches 62‘5 per cent. The total revenue of the schools is <£1,215,816, of which £1,149,692 is derived from the State, including <£83,818 from the Customs and Excise grant. From all local sources together, including subscriptions and endowments and the fees paid by parents, the amount available is only <£66,124. It is computed that the sum needed per head for elementary education is <£2, 7s. ll^d., of which <£2, 5s. 3d. is contributed by the State and 2s. 7Id. from all other sources. The Board of Education maintains one Training College (undenominational), in Marlborough Street, Dublin, under its own management, and subsidizes four other Training Colleges, of which two for men and one for women are under the care of the Catholic hierarchy, and one for men and women is managed by the Protestant Episcopal
