No. I.-TIME-TABLE of a School that does compete for Scholarships. Number of Boys in School, Summer 1899, 53.

A. This includes English Language, Literature, Grammar, and Composition. B. Alternative subjects. K. In Tables I., II., III., and V. there is no return showing to which subjects, or in what proportion the time awarded to preparation is allotted. Practice varies not only as between school and school, but even between the various forms of the same school. It may, however, be assumed that a very large proportion of the preparation time is given to Classics or Mathematics, or to both.

No. II.-TIME-TABLE of a School that does not compete for Scholarships. Number of Boys in the School, Summer 1899, 40.

A. See note to Table I. B. Alternative subjects, c. Alternative subjects.

K. See note to Table I.

No. III.—TIME-TABLE of a School preparing for special Public School (Scotch). Number of Boys in the School, Summer 1899, 54.

B. Class II. is shown as more nearly approximating average age than Class I.

c. Optional subject .

K. See note to Table I.

No. IV. AVERAGE of time given to various subjects as shown by comparison of returns that have come to hand.

B. Usually German is alternative with Greek, with extra French and Mathematics; 58.6 per cent. of the Schools do not teach German at all.

c. 37 per cent. omit Geography entirely; 62 per cent. do not teach it to their top form.

D. 725 per cent. omit this subject entirely; 837 per cent. do not teach it to the top form.

E. One school omits it entirely; 387 per cent. do not teach it in the top form.

F. In 342 per cent. of returns it is an optional subject. The above is the average in the remaining 65.8 per cent.

G. No average is possible, practice varies so greatly.

H. The average total given above is not the sum of the various items of the table, but is the average of totals actually returned in each school. No school teaches all the subjects enumerated.

It is unfortunately impossible to show in a similar manner the work in the forms intervening between the ages of nine and thirteen, because no two schools have similar form organisations. In one case there are as many as twelve separate forms for boys between the ages of nine and a-half and twelve and a-half, on the other hand there are often not more than one or two; but as illustrating the gradation of work, and in particular as showing the stage at which Greek Algebra, and Euclid are commenced, the subjoined time-table (No. 5) (a school that

sometimes but not regularly competes for scholarships) may be taken as a fairly accurate representation of the general practice.

No. V.-TIME-TABLE of a School that does sometimes compete for Scholarships, illustrative of intermediate classes, and of the ages at which Greek, Algebra, and Euclid are commenced.

A. Extra time taken from Latin owing to temporary peculiarity of form.
B. Thirty-five minutes per week to Ancient History.

c. Young or delicate boys have the scale reduced.
K. See note to Table I.

SIMILARITY OF THE MAIN FEATURES.

Time-tables Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 5 may be taken as good specimens of their respective class of schools; such variations as exist between them would be found to exist between all the returns that have come to hand; so, too, will their marked family resemblances: the former due to the idiosyncrasies of individual headmasters, the latter imposed by the range of subjects set for entrance scholarship or ordinary entrance examinations at the public schools.

PARTICULAR SUBJECTS.-CLASSICS.

The most notable feature in these time-tables is the extraordinary weight given in them to classics and mathematics. It would seem that to these subjects alone is awarded sufficient time for the boys to be thoroughly grounded. Table I. shows sixteen hours per week devoted to classics alone exclusive of time allotted to that subject in preparation. Exact details of the amount so allotted are wanting, but in this and in all similar cases it may be assumed that the proportion of preparation given to classics and mathematics is a large one. From this time-table, too, it is evident that classical rather than mathematical distinction is coveted in this particular school. An example could equally

4333.

D

well be found where the converse was true, although in no case are the maximum hours awarded to mathematics so great as in the case of classics. Nineteen and a-half hours per week is the maximum return in any case for classics, and twelve hours is the maximum, of course in another school, for mathematics, exclusive of preparation.

AGE OF BEGINNING LATIN AND GREEK.

A well-marked rule will be found illustrated in Table No. 5. It appears to be the practice to begin the teaching of Latin to boys as soon as they can read and write English with some facility. They usually reach this stage by the age of nine-the age at which they generally enter a preparatory school. On entry, they at first devote somewhat less time than the rest of the school to Latin, but the hours are gradually increased as they go up the school until the point is reached at which Greek is begun, when the restrictions of the time-tables require some reduction to be made in favour of the new subject. Thus on Table No. 5 a boy of nine gives seven hours a week to Latin. A year later rather more than nine hours. A year later he has returned to seven hours for Latin, and in addition now devotes four hours to Greek. At that stage the proportion between the two would remain constant unless he passed into the Scholarship form at the head of the school, when more time would be necessarily devoted to Greek to enable him to acquire the vocabulary required for the difficult "sight" translations that are commonly

set.

Greek is sometimes not commenced before the age of twelve. But this practice, affording as it does opportunity to devote attention to some of the least noticed but highly important subjects of the time-table, is practically impossible for schools that compete for scholarships; for them, the standard of Greek required for scholarships is so high as to compel its inclusion in the curriculum generally at the age of eleven years, sometimes still earlier.

MATHEMATICS.

Exact statistics of the age at which the teaching of Algebra and Euclid is begun, and of the times devoted to those subjects, are not deducible from the returns to hand. So far as they go they tend to show that the arrangement of Table No. 5 is approximately representative. It is the usual practice to entirely re-classify the school for mathematics; 25.8 per cent. of the schools, however, have not yet done so.