5. 1d. for each hour’s attendance of each student.
6. 15 per cent. on all voluntary subscriptions and donations from private sources.
Provided that the total payment to any Polytechnic under 2, 3, 4, and 5 does not exceed £3000, and under 6 does not exceed £2000.
The Polytechnics are really subsidised from five different sources: private generosity, city companies, ancient and hitherto misapplied charities, part of the proceeds of the ‘beer and spirit tax,’ grants from the South Kensington Department.
Dreary as are such enumerations of names and figures, there is a special interest attaching to this particular set. The aggrieved ratepayer is apt at times to point to these splendid buildings as an example of the way in which his hard won money is being squandered, quite regardless of the fact that those papers he abhors have never contained any appeal for money for this purpose. London has never levied a technical education rate, thanks to these other sources of income which have given her citizens so much without any sacrifice on their part. The beer and spirit money has acted the part of a fairy godmother to London men and women.
It was made clear from the outset that both sexes were alike to benefit, and thus the Polytechnics have become what our American cousins call ‘co-educational.’ But the needs of men and women are not always the same, and the special wants of women were considered in the establishment of a domestic economy side, though they are not limited to this. Practically the whole field of education beyond the elementary is open to county council action, provided no aid is given to institutions with a definite religious bias or conducted for private profit. The only subjects distinctly excluded by the Acts are classics and literature. The money is therefore available for purposes of—(1) definite Trade instruction; (2) day and evening classes in Science, both theoretical and applied, and Domestic Economy; (3) secondary education of a modern character.
Under these two last headings great things have been done for girls and women. In spite of the recent introduction into the elementary school code of such subjects as cooking and laundry, it is becoming more and more clear that the brief time allotted to the Standards is not too much for a grounding in general subjects, and that after this should come the preparation of a girl to be useful at home or to earn her living by domestic work. The elementary school girl is too young, the high school girl too busy, to gain much from the wedging of a little domestic teaching into the mass of the ordinary school work. Nor is a cookery or a laundry lesson once a week of much use in giving the necessary skill and practice. Domestic work wants continuous and consecutive practice, for the acquisition of that ‘touch’ and ‘knack’ on which so much depends; and the domestic economy schools come in here to supply what is really wanted.
This type of school did not originate in London, though it has taken very firm root there. Some very interesting experiments had been made in other parts of the country, notably Yorkshire, before Battersea, the Borough, and Regent Street Polytechnics in 1894 opened their domestic economy schools, with fifty-four scholars nominated by the Technical Education Board, and the addition of a few paying pupils. This example was soon followed by the other Polytechnics, and the Board now elects 386 scholars annually, who are distributed among nine schools. The course lasts five months, and during this time the scholars receive free tuition, two free meals daily, and the material required for making dresses or other garments. They attend from 9.30 to 12.30 and 2 to 4.30 every day except Saturday. During that time they get a continuous and thorough training in cookery, needlework, dress cutting and making, laundry work and housewifery, with some gymnastics and singing. In addition to these scholarships second courses of five months’ instruction, with the opportunity of specialising in one particular branch, are now awarded to eighty-four scholars each half-year. The first course is not meant to train a cook or a dressmaker, but any girl who wishes to qualify herself for such a post gets a capital chance of testing her own abilities and inclination, and there are further opportunities of training open to her, if she desires them, in the second course or at the National Training School of Cookery. Last year four girls were apprenticed in good dressmaking firms on leaving the school.
Mrs. Pillow, lately employed by the Education Department to prepare a special report on the teaching of Domestic Economy, gives an account of the work of these schools. She says: ‘Housekeeping and cookery are treated as part of the everyday life of the girls, and not merely as school lessons. The girls cook the meals which they are to eat; they learn to measure and fit themselves for the dresses which they are taught to make, and they are instructed in laundry work in such a way that they can quite well apply their knowledge to the “family wash” in their own homes. The cookery syllabus contains dishes which are well within the reach of the working man earning an average wage; the using up of odds and ends, bones, crusts, and cold vegetables, scraps of meat, etc. receives attention, and the utensils and stoves provided for the girls are similar[[17]] to those found in the majority of artisans’ homes.
‘The laundry work is taught on simple and common-sense principles, the only extra aid to speed and efficiency being a wringer and mangle, and, as these are now so frequently found in the homes of the more thrifty housewives, it is well that the girls should be taught to use them properly. The processes of steeping, washing, boiling, rinsing, blueing, wringing, drying, folding, mangling are all thoroughly taught. The washing of flannels and woollens, a part of laundry work which is frequently very badly done by laundry women, receives special attention, and starching and ironing are exceedingly well done by the girls at the conclusion of their course of training.