education would be managed by the State in a way contrary to their interests? At first, no doubt, as in the starting of most new projects, mistakes would be made. We might, though it is not likely, start with a counterpart of the hard and fast unmellowed revised code of Primary Education, but just as public opinion and larger experience has improved, and is still improving, our primary system, so would initial errors and misconceptions in the organising of a secondary system, be removed and remedied. An educated public opinion would have the matter in its own. hands.

But we contend for the public establishment of middle class schools, not only on the ground of efficiency, but also on that of economy. Such establishment simply means the co-operative principle applied to education. We should become sharers in the profits pecuniary as well as educational. The experience of France and other continental nations that have tried it, proves this conclusively. In the Lycées of France and the Gymnasien and Realschulen of Germany, which approximately correspond to our secondary and technical schools, a more advanced education is supplied at a much cheaper rate, simply because the State, that is, ourselves, supply it to ourselves, under the favourable conditions of united action and complete organisation. The experience in the higher class primary schools of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other large towns where the circumstances are similar, points clearly in the same direction. Many parents who ten years ago sent their children to high-feed badly taught schools of a private and select character, now send them to such of the Board Schools as aim at more than elementary work, where the instruction is much better and the expense much less, and the former class of schools are one by one disappearing. It is only by State management that this cheapness and goodness can be attained. The complete change of feeling on the part of both the public and teachers, with respect to Board Schools, is very instructive. Ten years ago when Lord Young's Act came into operation, the name 'Board School' almost stank in the nostrils of even the respectable working class. There was a mild flavour of pauperism about it which the independent Scot did not like. The School Board was thought to have a not very distant cousinship relation to

the Parochial Board. Teachers of private and sessional schools, both Free and Established, regarded themselves as occupying a higher platform. The Board Schools might be filled, they thought, with the gutter children of our large towns; the respectable working class would hold by the schools untainted by Board management. Few of the teachers of the then existing schools would have agreed to a transference to the new institutions. What do we find to-day in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and other large towns? The absorption by the Board Schools has been almost complete. Only a few of the old sessional schools, and of these only the best, remain, and there is perhaps not one of their teachers who is not at this moment most anxious to get an appointment to a Board School. To what is this remarkable change of attitude on the part of both parents and teachers due? Simply to a conviction based on experience that education is one of the things which, in our corporate capacity as members of the State, we can manage to better advantage than if we left it to private or ecclesiastical enterprise. In fact there are good grounds for thinking that the excellence of much of the instruction in the Primary Schools, trenching as it does on higher subjects, may have dulled the edge of a wish for fully organised Secondary Schools. Some maintain that this expansion of Primary Education is all we require, but this opinion must not be allowed to carry us too far. We should be sorry to see the higher work in Primary Schools diminished wherever it is done well. In many cases it is done poorly and from inferior motives. Children who have no capacity for higher work are often crammed with a superficial and useless smattering of Latin, mathematics, physiology, and magnetism, simply for the grant that may be earned. With this we have no sympathy; but in many schools in the main primary there are children, whose probable career in life does not need, and whose means do not afford, the advantage of higher culture who, under skilful teachers, receive instruction in these subjects, which gives them a healthy stimulus in the direction of a wider intellectual life.

At the same time we can conceive of no greater mistake than to suppose that the low condition of our secondary instruction

end of an elementary course. The boy whose aim is a sound classical or technical education should have his training turned in those directions at a much earlier age, and in a much more systematic way than can be done at a primary school. We have already said that we need three sets of schools. For this we need money and organisation.

Where is the money to come from, and to what can we look for the requisite organisation? For both we must look to State interference and educational endowments. A district or group of districts may, under favourable conditions, succeed in covering a limited area, but that the best brain all over the country may be utilised no agency other than the State can successfully undertake the task. As we have already said, we should press into the service every shilling of educational endowments legally available. Where there are no endowments or where they are insufficient, the want should be supplied by the State by whatever form of taxation may be thought most suitable. This is a detail into which we cannot enter. It is sufficient for our purpose to maintain that the question ought to be regarded, as in reality it is, one of imperial moment.

Assuming that the necessity of this is recognised, and that the pecuniary difficulty is not insurmountable, the necessary and most effective machinery is the next important question. We have fortunately the experience of France, Germany, and other continental nations to guide us. We can adopt the essentials of the system which they have found to work well, and at the same time omit details less in harmony with our national character. We need not adopt the vexatious rigidity of some parts of their system in order to have the full benefit of a completely organised education. It is not desirable to interfere with the free swing and individuality of the secondary teacher to such an extent as we fear the Scotch code, good as it is, cramps the action of some primary teachers, especially of such as have a natural leaning towards wooden mechanical work. We would not limit school managers in their choice of books or subjects. We would not imitate the French in throwing difficulties in the way of setting up private schools. In secondary as in primary work we would

satisfying the conditions imposed on public schools, one of which should be regular inspection. Such private schools as did not attempt to satisfy the conditions might be left to their fate. We might confidently trust that, with an educated public opinion, schools supervised by the State, and open to examination by State officials, would in a short time sweep out of existence private schools that were doing bad work. If they were doing good work, there is no reason why they should not remain.

For carrying on with full success a national system such as we have sketched, we must have a central source of authority in the shape of a Minister of Education. In such an appointment politics should have no share. He should be chosen on the ground of interest in and fitness for the work. He should have associated with him other men of similar tastes and fitness for purposes of consultation; but to give precision to the system, and prevent waste of valuable time, the source of authority must be definite and responsible. He would have many important duties in which his colleagues, who must be experts in education, would be able to assist him. For aid and information on local matters, a local, district, or county board will be necessary. About the constitution of this board there may be different opinions. Without entering into details, we may say that it should cover a wider territorial area, and be of a higher intellectual type than the average rural board, few of which could grapple successfully with all or many of the questions that would be sure to crop up in connexion with advanced instruction. The resident sheriffs and others who had enjoyed the benefits of a liberal education, would do good service in the deliberations of a county board. It is essential that the Education Minister should feel that he was corresponding with a Board, some of whose members had received such an education as fitted them to deal with the subject under discussion. Among the duties that would fall to the Minister would be to organise the competition for admission to public foundations, to adapt to each other School and University instruction, to settle the extent to which School or University examination sufficed for admission to public appointments. It would lie with him to determine where-whether in counties or school districts centres of

kind of training requisite as qualifying for the duties of secondary teacher. It would be his duty to arrange a tariff of fees which, supplemented where necessary by rates, would meet the total expense. The fees might be taken charge of either by the State, or paid into the school fund, according as the settlement of the teachers' salaries was left to the Education Minister or to the Local Board. He would further have to settle. for each district the number and amount of bursaries available for University or technical education, according to the character of the district; to lay down rules regulating the kind of inspection necessary. As grants would probably not take any other form than bursaries open to public competition, the inspection need not be so tedious and elaborate as in primary schools. All the purposes of a public examination, as determining the quality of instruction, and giving a stimulus to well-sustained effort, may be served by a less toilsome mode of inspection. To model all schools on precisely the same pattern, which would almost certainly be the case were we to import the method of primary inspection into secondary work, or to tie down the teacher to certain books or parts of books for the various years, would be ruinous to much that is most valuable in Secondary Education. The stimulus of University competition, and the experience of what has been found to secure success in it, coupled with judicious suggestions from the examiner, based on his observation of other schools maintaining a wholesome rivalry, would supersede the necessity of a hard and fast secondary code. The inspection given to secondary schools at present is extremely unsatisfactory. The examiners may be amateurs, and are appointed and paid by the school managers, an arrangement not the most likely to produce either efficient examination or independent reports. They may be, and often are, changed every year, and the evidence of progress or the reverse is consequently untrustworthy. The examiner who last year made some useful suggestions, may or may not have an opportunity this year of seeing whether, and how far, they have been carried out. The thriftlessness of this want of system is too obvious to require further comment.