Notes

Abstract

AN important Bill dealing with the question of technical education has been introduced into the House of Commons by Sir Henry Roscoe. The Bill empowers any School Board, loc a authority, or managers of a public elementary school, to provide day technical and commercial schools and classes for the purpose of giving instruction in any of certain subjects. These include the several science subjects which are specified in the Directory of the Science and Art Department, and in which that Department undertakes to examine. The following subjects are also included: the use of ordinary tools, commercial arithmetic, commercial geography, book-keeping, French, German, and other foreign languages, and freehand and machine drawing. The addition of other subjects may be sanctioned from time to time by the Committee of Council on Education or by the Science and Art Department. For the purpose of carrying on these schools and classes, the power of School Boards, other local authorities, and school managers is to be in every respect the same as for providing ordinary elementary schools. They are to have power to provide, or contribute to the maintenance of, laboratories and workshops in endowed schools for the purpose of carrying on classes or instruction under the Bill. All these schools and classes are to be subject to the inspection of the officers of the Committee of Education or of the Science and Art Department. Before a scholar is admitted he must have passed the Sixth Standard or some equivalent examination. The Education Committee and the Science and Art Department are authorized to give grants, on such conditions as they may lay down for any of the subjects taught. For the purpose of obtaining grants a technical school or class must be one carried on under minutes to be made by the Science and Art Department, and laid on the table of the House of Commons in the same way as the minutes that regulate the grants of the Education Department.