VIII. The Fees in a Navigation School should be carefully adjusted.
A carefully adjusted scheme of fees from 1d. to 1s. per week will not exclude by their amount any poor boys whom we might wish to admit, or to repel by their insignificance those parents who would attach no value to that which cost them little.
The larger portion of the fees, after deducting a certain fixed sum, or a certain definite proportion of them for local expenses, will stand in the school accounts to the credit of the local committee, and will be expended from time to time, with the consent of the Department, in paying the masters’ salaries, the boys’ exhibition money, &c.
In some seaports, where there is a pertinacious disinclination on the part of the parents of the boys to their going to sea, I have suggested to the committee the undertaking to return all or a portion of the school fees of any boy who has passed above a certain mark, on proof being received that the boy has sailed. This would in many cases act both on parent and child as a great inducement to the boy to go to sea.
IX. Navigation Schools should be periodically inspected and reported on.
Inspection to be really valuable should be thorough. Now the subjects in which it is proposed that the boys shall be taught at the Navigation School are very numerous, and none of them should, if possible, be allowed to escape the notice of the inspector and the test of examination.
I propose that there shall be two examinations every half-year, (1) the general examination, to measure the progress and proficiency of the navigation classes, and the payment to be made to the educational staff; (2) the special competitive examination for prizes and exhibitions. The first will be held in the course of the half-year, in the presence of the inspector and master, the answers, however, to be looked over and valued in London. The second will be held at the close of the half-year, in the presence of the master and of one or more of the local committee. It will be entirely a written examination, the questions to be sent from the Department. To prevent any suspicion of unfair treatment, the examination books should, after each examination, be sealed up at the close of the day, in the presence of the boys, and sent to London. The prizes and prize studentships will be awarded when the school meets again, at the commencement of the next half-year. The answers will be valued in London, by a person appointed for that special purpose. The practice I have adopted is to give full numbers for an accurate answer, half numbers for an answer which, though inaccurate, shows intelligence.
The inspector who conducts the general examination should have with him various papers of questions of equal value on each subject, so as to diminish the possibility of information as to the questions set at the examination being communicated from one school to the other. The masters have a direct pecuniary interest in preventing any information being sent to the other schools.
I suggest that the general examination, to ascertain the amount of examination money, be conducted in the following manner:
The school to be arranged previous to the arrival of the inspector, in five classes, each class separated from the other as far as the arrangements of the school will admit, and the five classes to be so composed as to be about equal, both in average and collective intelligence. No difficulty is experienced by the masters in doing this.