What is now urged on behalf of Ragged Schools, is, 1st.-That they be exempted from the ordinary examination test for the payment of the capitation grant adopted for schools of a more advanced or precise form of education, and that the Government Inspectors may be allowed a discretionary power of estimating the results of the school training and instruction by a practical standard having some better relation to the objects, while they might be charged with the duty of ascertaining that the attendance is confined to children whose circumstances in life would prevent their going to the National School: 2nd.-That where results are produced satisfactorily to the inspector, the employment of a non-certificated master, if in other respects unobjectionable, should not invalidate the claim for payment.

It will, indeed, be a disgrace to England, as the leading Christian nation, if the grant be not at once renewed; and the Committee of Council on Education, in the event of refusal, will remain under the well-merited stigma of having, by its petty official spirit of domineering, done more to retard the education of the poor than all the united prejudices of the old school of educationalists.

The State of Popular Education, and Suggestions for its Advancement. By E. BROTHERTON.

THE mode by which the Government of this country assists in the education of the people, is one which can only be fairly judged when the difficulties of the task are taken into account. It was required that the Privy Council should be neither religious nor irreligious ; that it should improve schools, yet have no voice in their management, and no power to found any; that it should educate the poor, yet never come into immediate contact with them, or send a single child to school. The want of agreement among the religious bodies has put the Government into this difficult position; and it is fortunate for the country that any good whatever has been accomplished in the 30 years during which the Committee of Council have been making grants.

Something has been accomplished in the improvement of schools, and in the training of teachers, but scarcely anything has been done to bring the lower strata of society under educational influences. An uneasy sense of this is felt, even in official quarters, and various changes have been made in the administration of the public grants within the last few years. In a debate in the last session of Parliament, Mr. Bruce is reported to have said that "whatever success might have attended the present educational system in the more populous districts, it could not be said to have exercised, in the poorer and less populous districts of the country, a very useful influence." Mr. Bruce went on to show that government aid has hitherto gone almost entirely to the larger parishes in the kingdom,

and that only 8 per cent. of the parishes, numbering less than 500 inhabitants each, were receiving government aid.

The truth is, that government grants, as now administered, scarcely reach the poorest part of the population at all, either in towns or in country districts. They are devoted to the aid of those who can afford to pay school fees, while those who cannot pay anything are left in their ignorance.

It is doubtless true that the town districts absorb the largest proportion of the grants, for the very evident reason that the population is more dense in towns. Suppose, for the sake of illustration, a rural district with a population of 100 persons to the square mile. Let four miles of this district be considered as a school district. There is, thus, a population of 400 persons to supply a school with pupils. About one-sixth of that number, i.e., 67, will be children of school-ages, and of both sexes. But probably not more than half these children are able to bring school fees. To keep up a school eligible for government grants, i.e., having a certificated teacher, for only 30 to 40 children would be very costly to the private benevolence of the district. But if, instead of a country district, we take for example a town with a quarter of a million inhabitants, and a density of population of 40,000 or 50,000 to the square mile, and suppose, as in the other case, only half the people able to pay school fees; each square mile of the town will be able to pay to support, with very little effort, seven or eight large government schools. Yet the result, even in this case, as in the other, will be that the poorest half of the population will be left uneducated. The rural district, with its 30 scholars, will have some kind of a school, with an uncertificated mistress or master, and no government aid; the town will have government inspection and aid, but only for those children who would have been at school if government grants had been unknown, though, probably, in that case, the schools would have been of an inferior kind.

In

It is erroneous to imagine that, at present, education reaches the mass of the people more fully in towns than in rural districts. proof of this, I will refer to the "Report of the Royal Commission on the State of Popular Education," 1861, Vol. I, page 595. The proportion to the population of children attending public day schools is there stated to be, in Lancashire, only one in 13.3 persons, while in Wiltshire the proportion is one in 78, in Westmoreland one in 7.9, and in Oxfordshire one in 8.3. Thus Lancashire, with its immense town population, has a much smaller proportion of children at public schools, than some of the purely agricultural and pastoral counties.

Of the social and educational condition of the great manufacturing and commercial towns of Great Britain, perhaps Manchester may be considered as a fair representative. It is not in the highest or the lowest rank. And recent inquiries enable us to know, with some degree of accuracy, what its condition is. The Statistical Society of Manchester has long taken a deep interest in educational

questions, and has, at different periods, published the exact results of its inquiries. A report of this society was published in 1835, and another in 1862, respecting the educational condition of Manchester, giving, for the two periods, the following numbers of children attending day schools, and the population :

Thus, though the actual number of day scholars had greatly increased, the increase has not kept pace with the increase of population, and this is equivalent to an actual decline in numbers. Thirty years ago, there was one day scholar for each 10.33 of population; while in 1861 there was only one for each 11.00 of population. Or, to put it in other words, there were, in 1834, 967 day scholars in every 10,000 inhabitants; while, in 1861, there were only 908 day scholars in every 10,000 inhabitants. It is very probable that similar results would be found, if similar inquiries were set on foot in others of the large towns of England.

So much has lately been said about educational progress, that probably some incredulity may be excited by the statement of these figures. Those, however, who have known the working classes intimately during the last quarter of a century, and know also the composition of the masses in some of our large towns, will not be in the least surprised. In Manchester the statement of the facts awakened so much attention, that the Statistical Society commenced a very important inquiry, which is not yet completed: viz., an accurate and careful investigation from house to house of certain selected districts of the town, considered as representative districts. The details respecting one such district were published a few months ago, in a report issued by the society, and in that district it was found that there were 438 children attending day schools, while there were 577 neither at school nor at work.

In the beginning of 1864, a society was established in Manchester called the Education Aid Society; its primary object being to send to school the children of people who are too poor to pay the whole of the school fees. The choice of school is, in all cases, given to the parents. Generally, about half the school fees are paid by the society, but, in a few exceptional cases, the whole are paid. No grant is made until the family has been visited and reported upon to a sub-committee, which sits weekly, and by which the necessary grant is made. About 7,000 children are now attending day-schools, who have been sent by this society, and the number is constantly increasing.

It is probable, however, that the incidental and secondary results of the operations of this society will prove more important than the primary.

By means of a canvass from house to house, an exhaustive analysis of the working population is in progress. Hitherto, the society's visitor has been sent to ten different districts, far apart from each other, all of them inhabited almost exclusively by working people. These ten specimen districts may be considered to afford a fair illustration of the average condition of the working classes in Manchester and Salford. The lowest district of the whole town, however, and one which may be looked upon as the St. Giles' of Manchester, viz., Angel Meadow, has not yet been visited. A few of the statistics collected may be useful here.

The total number of families that have been made the subjects of inquiry is 2,896, and they consist of 14,963 persons. Among these there were 9,240 children; 2,882 above, 12 years of age; 4,359 between 3 and 12; 1,999 under 3 years.

Of those above 12 years of age, there were only 44 attending day schools; 2,343 were at work, and 495 were neither at school nor at work.

The children between 3 and 12 are those with whom the inquiry is most concerned, and of these there are 4,359. They are accounted for as follows:-At work, 290; at school, 1,749; neither at school nor at work, 2,320-4,359. Thus there were only 40 per cent. at school, while there were 53 per cent. neither at school nor at work. These proportions varied but slightly in different districts, and there was no single district in which there was not a majority of the children between 3 and 12 that are neither at school nor at work. And lest any should object that children of three years old are not to be expected to go to school, it may be stated that some hundreds of the 40 per cent. at school are children between 3 and 5. They attend infants' schools.

The society gives no aid in cases where the family earnings amount to 3s. per head per week, exclusive of rent. The parents are then considered as able to pay. Adopting this standard, it was found that of the 2,320 children neither at school nor at work, the parents of 809 were able to pay. Of the rest, more than 1,200 children received grants from the society, and these children were from 603 families. The total income of the 603 families, consisting of 3,047 souls, is £380 4s. 9d. per week, and their weekly rent is £68 15s. 3d., leaving £311 9s. 6d. nett, which is an average of 2s. Old. per week for each person. A further scrutiny of the 603 families shows that there are considerable differences among them, and that 305 of these families, consisting of 1,674 persons, i. e., fully half the families, and considerably more than half the persons, receive a nett amount of only £114 16s. 5d. per week, or an average of 1s. 44d. per head per week. These 305 families are found in a total of 2,645 families, and constitute therefore 11.5 per cent. of the whole number, while they are 12.4 per cent. of the

whole number of persons. Of the families assisted those of widows were 13.6 per cent. of the whole.

The investigation made of one of the central districts of Manchester by the Statistical Society, has been already referred to. The incomes of 1,021 families were ascertained in the course of the inquiry; and of these, there were 339 families, or one-third of the whole, whose weekly incomes averaged only 5s. 6d. per family. The number of individuals of these 339 families is not given, but taking them at the average of the families in the district, they would consist of 1,234 persons, and the weekly income would be 1s. 6d. per head. If we deduct only 5d. per week for rent for each person, there remains the small sum of 1s. 1d. per week each for food and clothing.

Taking as data the results obtained by the two societies, it is perfectly safe to infer that at least a fourth of the working population of Manchester and Salford are in receipt of not more than an average of 2s. for each person per week, after deducting rent. A much larger proportion of the whole will average less than 3s. nett weekly. The number of those with the smaller weekly income, viz., an average of 28. per head, will be, in Manchester and Salford, at least 100,000; and of this number 20,000 will be children of school ages. This state of things is not the result of the cotton famine, or any temporary pressure. It is the normal condition existing now, when the cotton famine is past, and, there is no doubt, also existing, with equal pressure, in all the other large towns of England.

It is clearly not possible for people in such circumstances to pay school-fees. Unhappily there is a vague notion, widely entertained, that school-fees are now so trifling as to put education within the reach of all. A very little inquiry and reflection would dissipate this mischievous notion. Many parents are careless, it is true, but a still greater number find an insuperable barrier in school-fees.

Dr. Edwin Smith, in a report to the Privy Council, has stated that a large number of the people of this country are unable to procure the minimum quantity of food necessary to sustain life. He enumerates many classes of workers engaged in town occupations, and includes with them one-fifth of the whole agricultural population. If this be true, how unthinkingly cruel must be the conclusion that where children are not sent to school, it is only because parents are careless.

With those who have never felt the pinch of want, it is difficult to understand it. Examine carefully the following account of the actual weekly income and expenditure of a sober, hard-working man, who, a few months ago, having no work in his native Lincolnshire, came with his family to Manchester, and fortunately obtained work there. It contains nothing which needs vouching for-it speaks for itself and whoever will thoughtfully examine it, may have some faint idea of the difficulties which beset the working man's education of his children.