SCHOOLS.
There are three schools in these two villages. One of them is a Dame school, or an unpretending private one, which I did not visit; but the two principal ones deserve attention from the students of our institutions and of English ones. They are public schools, although people pay for tuition. That in Haddenham is a National school, that in Stonea a British school. In the former, Mr. Rounce, the rector, is manager, and the doctrines of the Church of England are taught. The other, the British school, is under charge of a board, or of a committee, of which several members are dissenters.
I first visited the National or Church of England school. Eighty-one names were upon the roll and fifty in attendance at one of my visits. (Some little ones were at work in the fields, weeding, or perhaps hay-making.) Pupils may enter at two years. The printed form issued by government asks, “How many have you under three?” And by the obligatory law the schools can claim them at five.
Upon the walls of the school were several maps, a large printed copy of the Creed, large tablets of the Commandments, and little pictures from the Bible, with perhaps a few from natural history. The blackboard was an insignificant one, about four feet square. I observed the small amount of blackboard surface provided, and the youngest teacher said that in the British schools there is blackboard on the sides of the room.
There was in the school a little picture of the royal family. “We teach them loyalty to the queen,” said one of the teachers.
Connected with the school was an infant department. Here the blackboard measured about one foot by eighteen inches. There were a few objects upon the walls, but there seemed to me a general bareness of appliances for instruction.
This school is an endowed one, having fourteen acres of land; it has always been a National school, or one where the principles of the Church of England are taught. Five years ago it became a government school,—i.e., it has become an “efficient elementary school” under the government; it is examined by a government inspector, and for children coming up to the government standard the school receives a small sum in payment on each. These “results,” as they are called, all pass into the rector’s hands, as manager of the school, to be appropriated either toward the payment of teachers or for school apparatus. Here all apparatus is paid for from this fund.
For instruction of children farmers pay four cents a week for each child; others two. The parish pays for pauper children. The amount of the endowment and the government grant are not even enough, I am told, to pay the principal; and the two assistants are paid by the rector.
National or, in other words, Church of England schools are also visited by a diocesan inspector, appointed by the bishop to report their progress in “Holy Scripture, Prayer-Book, and Catechism.” This school having been reported very good last year, a gift of about seven dollars was made to the teacher and monitor.
Instruction must be given for four hundred sessions yearly, equivalent to two hundred days.
Some teachers in government schools receive pensions, but as the number of pensions in England and Scotland is limited to two hundred and seventy, there are not enough for all. Before leaving this school, I may mention that I made some inquiry about the chapel, which stood not far off. One of the teachers answered, “I know nothing about dissent; I never go into those places.”
The school in the other village of Stonea (Haddenham cum Stonea) was called the British school, and was much larger, having one hundred and forty pupils. The room was large and well lighted, and there was an appearance of thrift and animation in the scholars. It is not under the control of the Church of England; neither are members of that church excluded from its management. It is managed by a committee of seven, of whom two or three are members of the church. The services of the committee, including the secretary, are gratuitous. The school has an income of three hundred dollars, drawn from a gift in land, made many years ago for the free education of village-born children. This sum is supplemented by subscription. This school also is visited by the government inspector, and a certain sum is paid, according to the attainments of the children, called, as I have said, “the results.” The committee decides what shall be done with this sum.
The school funds are further supplemented thus: In the village the children pay two cents a week. Those out of the village pay, if laborers, four cents for the first child, and two for each of the others. Persons of means pay twelve cents a week, but there are very few such.
Members of the Society of Friends, “who have always been active in education,” raised a general subscription for building a new school-house, and the government added a grant; “the government would always thus assist to build a public school.”
Religious instruction is not obligatory here as in the National school; it is at the option of the committee, who have decided to have Bible instruction for the first hour in the morning. The government allows any one who brings a written request from his father to absent himself from this instruction. No such case has ever arisen here. It may in towns where there are Free-thinkers and Catholics.
This school is plentifully supplied with blackboards. The principal difference that I observed in instruction between this and some public ones I have known at home was in arithmetic. A series of six small practical arithmetics was in use. At the close of each were examination questions. Here is the last in Standard 6, the highest: “If 27 men build 54 roods of garden wall in 26 days, how many roods will 32 men, working equally well, build in 39 days?” Perhaps twice in a week they have mental arithmetic. Here is the last question in Standard 5, mental: “A yard at half a guinea an inch?”
These elementary schools in villages are mixed, or for both sexes; in towns they are not. By the act of 1870, a pupil must enter school at five (education being obligatory), and remain until thirteen. There are, however, six standards in the school, and a pupil who wishes to go to work sooner may demand a certificate if he has finished the fourth standard, and is not obliged to finish the term.
I asked of one of the teachers or monitors in this British school whether she had ever visited the other, the National school. She replied that she would not like to go there. She seemed to fear that she would be thought a spy. The rector does not visit this British school. “Unfortunately,” said one to me, “in our country the Church of England people think themselves above everybody else, and unless they can have the management of affairs will have nothing to do with them. The rector feels that he ought to have the management of the school, and is sore on that point; but it has been a successful school for forty years, and nothing that the rector can do can injure it.”
I asked, “Has the teacher of the National school ever visited this one?”
“No; where the rector does not go, his people may not. We have tried every means to unite with them, but without effect. All the exertions here are for the good of the school, but in the other village for the good of the church. They want a teacher who will serve them in the school, the Sunday-school, and the choir.”
But on this parish controversy a few words were spoken to me by a diligent member of the Established Church. He said, “The rector thinks he ought to be one of the trustees of the British school, as a bequest upon which it is in part founded says that the clergyman of the parish shall be one of the trustees, but they say that they will wait until the trusteeship is vacant.” The place was filled, I understood, by the former rector, who, as I have said, was described as a tiny little man; a clever, very learned man; a stanch liberal in politics, over eighty years of age.
Afterwards, in Manchester, I met a person who spoke further on the subject of public schools. I give what he said, as drawn from my notes, on his own authority; for although it does not especially concern the parish of Haddenham cum Stonea, yet it does the general subject of English schools.
He said that the members of the Church of England support National or Church of England schools. The Roman Catholics support their own. The dissenters support unsectarian British schools, which receive all denominations. There is yet another class of elementary ones, namely, School Board schools. These boards are elected by the rate- or tax-payers. The schools are established in districts where there are not enough others to educate the children. It not unfrequently happens that a Church school or a British one which is unable to support itself, in spite of the government assistance before described, is turned over by its conductors to the school board. In Manchester this board has now in its schools about two-fifths of the children.
If the board wishes to establish a new school it has first to obtain leave from the committee on education of the Privy Council, belonging to the general government or to the ministry for the time being. The policy of the government is to prevent school boards from supplanting the sectarian schools; they are only allowed to supplement them, and no matter how poor the sectarian school may be, there is no way of getting it closed so long as Her Majesty’s inspector pronounces it efficient. The reports of the inspectors show that Board schools are improving more rapidly than others.
When by the act of 1870 these schools were first established they were regarded by the conductors of the others with contempt, especially by those of the Roman Catholic and Church schools; but such has been their progress within this brief period that they are now regarded with jealousy.
As to the prices charged by the Board schools, they must submit the payment of their proposed fees to the committee of Privy Council. The others mentioned may charge up to eighteen cents a week for instruction.
If a private school be inefficient, the school board may prosecute the parents of the children. But this applies to schools which teach pupils at less than eighteen cents per week; such as the old “Dame schools,” now nearly extinct, at least in Manchester.