school had therefore re-assembled the preceding week: "they must make a living."

When the collection of the children's pence is thus the primary and indeed the sole object, it is not to be wondered at if the want of education is only to be equalled by the want of educational furniture. Some of these schools changed their character early in the year, and by raising their weekly fees to tenpence and a shilling placed themselves outside the jurisdiction of the Act and the province of inspection. There is no reason, however, to suppose that any other change has taken place, or that the middle-class school so constituted is likely to have benefited by the alteration, and become more efficient because its terms are higher. Many of these establishments indeed have been given up, but, on the other hand, others are springing into existence from which no returns have been received. We can only hope that inspection will extend itself to these as well as to the higher class, though we do not know what provision can be made for continuing such inquiries permanently. The system of certificates might perhaps be carried further,

and licenses to keep a school be required, before the receipt of which it should be incumbent upon the applicant to prove that she possessed the necessary accommodation and was able to fulfil the requisite conditions for the purposes of education. As it is, the school is first started, to be then condemned; yet the condemnation cannot take effect until the new rate-provided schools have been built, and until the whole compulsory powers given by the Act are put into force. Obstacles will even then intervene. By the seventy-fourth section the first reasonable excuse which the parents of children may plead for not complying with the by-laws of a School Board requiring them to "cause their children to attend school" is-" that the child is under efficient instruction in some other manner." The parents may consequently state that their children are receiving satisfactory education in schools which have either not been inspected, or by an alteration in their premises have endeavoured to comply with the requirements of the Education Department. In each case a separate inquiry will then have to be made into the particular school in question, and

a fresh amount of labour will devolve upon the Board or the Department. The difficulties of the question are only just beginning, but in proportion to the knowledge gained will be the conclusion that we cannot afford to put off grappling with them. No small amount of interest attaches itself to the dame who keeps thirty children out of the streets and herself from pauperism by her exertions, and who says without complaint that she supposes she shall go to the workhouse when her school is taken away from her; but nobody can pity the fate that may overtake the shabby gentility, dirt, inefficiency, and ignorance of Dothegirls Hall.

PRIVATE SCHOOLS.

THE inquiry undertaken by the Education Department into the efficiency of schools involved two considerations-namely, the state of the premises and the character of the instruction given in the school. The conditions which the premises were expected to fulfil, besides those of being well-lighted, ventilated, and drained, included that of possessing suitable offices—i.e., offices used exclusively by the children attending the school; a requirement which would by itself, we believe, incapacitate all save a fraction of the 1927 adventure schools in the metropolis. Where therefore no possible means existed of making any changes, and where there was already ample reason for condemnation, it

was obviously unnecessary to inquire into the character of the instruction. In the case, however, of private schools this second qualification had to be strictly tested; some of them possessed excellent accommodation, good playgrounds, and an adequate supply of educational furniture, while others expressed their readiness to make any changes which might be considered requisite in their buildings. It remained, therefore, to ascertain the efficiency of the instruction.

The Education Department very properly believed that there is not in human beings an innate capacity of examining children. The process may be compared to pin-making-easy in proportion to the division of labour. If at the same moment of time one inspector placed all the children in a line, another gave them slates, a third dictated sums to them, a fourth heard them read, a fifth supplied them with intelligence, while a sixth engaged the attention of the clergyman and the mistress, a great saving of labour would be effected, and the economic results would naturally be immense. The following are "practical hints suggested by past experience." We quote from the Instruc