Report on the Normal and Model Schools of the British and Foreign School Society, situated in the Borough Road, London. By Joseph Fletcher, Esq., Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. Their maintenance to the present time PAGE . 296 ib. ib. 300 ib. 302 . 303 Practical application of these principles Fundamental rules of the Society Practical interpretation of the rule regarding religious instruction Progress in the scope of instruction in the model schools • 305 . 307 . 310 Insufficient education of student teachers, and its causes in the social position of their prospective office . 313 Progress under these difficulties and defects Relations with the Government in distributing parliamentary grants Financial prosperity and augmented vigour Fetters imposed upon internal advancement by external circumstances Proposal to erect four new normal schools. Present constitution and strength of the Society Patrons, committee, and officers Income and expenditure. Schools, their premises and buildings Departments into which the establishment is divided . 336 ib. 339 Difficulties in the way of systematic progress Course, books, methods, and progress in the junior class of student teachers 350 Course, books, methods, and progress in the senior class of student teachers. 354 Drawing and music Features of a school contemplated by this course of instruction (A.) Mr. Hullah's Report on the instruction in vocal music (B.) Building account . 427 (D.) Inspection examination papers (C.) Admission examination papers 428 430 (E.) Tables of the model boys' school lessons 433 (F.) Examination papers on the art of teaching and governing in a school, answered in the normal school for young men. 439 (G.) Ditto ditto, for young women (H.) Meetings of and lectures for teachers. • 447 . 451 MY LORDS, Privy Council Office, 7th April, 1847. IN obedience to the instructions conveyed to me by your Lordships' secretary, I proceeded, in the middle of February, to make a first inspection of the normal and model schools of the British and Foreign School Society, in the Borough Road, London, after having previously spent a few days in the model schools, before the dispersion of the children for the Christmas holidays, when, however, the darkness and severity of the weather both injured the attendance and partially interrupted the work of the classes. I have now, in accordance with the like instructions, to submit to your Lordships an outline of the history of this important institution, its constitution and its operations, though yet destitute, I regret to say, of the advantages derivable from a second inspection, with a mind forewarned of each feature demanding especial notice, and enabled to make some estimate of progress by reference to previous observations. The actual inspection of these schools occupied five weeks of my time, for they form two separate institutions, each composed of a normal and model school for males and females respectively, and the whole attended by upwards of a hundred teachers and a thousand children; and though the term of training for the former is, in practice, comparatively limited, yet the necessity for crowding every effort for their advancement, which can be made in other institutions during a somewhat lengthened period, within this narrow space of time, does but render necessary a regard more watchful than usual of all the elements introduced, to detect, amidst the press, those to which success or failure are justly attributable. The want of ampler resources, and a longer period of study, so far from dispensing with a close examination into the economy of existing means, does but render it, therefore, the more important; for the public necessity will not wait until a perfect system of satisfying it shall be prepared. The newer normal institutions which your Lordships have aided sprung at once into being, each with its own complete scheme of education and training, for a period of time decidedly longer than it has ever been found practicable to adopt in the Borough Road School. The latter, on the other hand, from the time when Joseph Lancaster first found friends in his enthusiastic labours, have been the subjects of a management not less cautious than energetic; one which, while it has laboured to increase the demand for teachers, and to raise the standard of their qualifications, has yet been constantly guided by a careful estimate of the actual extent and character of that demand, as marking the limits within which its labours and its resources could be most beneficially applied. At first it was attempted to raise a number of the monitors into pupil teachers, and bring these up to the profession of teaching in schools for the poor; but the pecuniary cost and moral hazards attaching to this course soon compelled the Committee to adapt their plans principally to admitting to the benefits of a twaining simply the best instructed of those who, at mature age, would, under existing circumstances, offer themselves for the career of schoolmaster to the poor; preferring, of course, those just entering into adult age, and possessed of the greatest energy and resources of character, and keeping them in the institution as long as their slender resources, or the great demand for schoolmasters at the existing rates of remuneration, would permit. In spite of constant endeavours on the part of the Committee to increase the proportion of students remaining in the institution for a whole year, there were, at the time of my visit, only four in the male and none in the female department who had been availing themselves of its advantages for upwards of six months; and only 23 in the male, with 20 in the female department, who had been in the institution previous to the commencement of the current quarter; while the remaining 39 in the male and 15 in the female department had been admitted at or since the commencement of the quarter. It is the rule of the institution to receive none for less than six months' training, but the demand for teachers is such, that it is impossible to keep many of them even for this time, whatever may be the deficiencies with which they entered, and which there may not have been opportunity to remove. Under such circumstances, it is almost impossible to institute an exact comparison between this and the other English training institutions which are officially visited by Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools; for the only near analogy that could be found in the whole kingdom would be in the original centre of the National School Society's operations, in the Sanctuary at Westminster, with its dependent establishments; and this, having received no aid from Government, is not open to official inspection. I shall best carry out my instructions, therefore, by simply describing, as succinctly as I am able, the constitution of the British and Foreign School Society, its aims, its means, and its progress, without reference to those of any other institution whatever. The materials for this description are the reports of the society, the records of its correspondence with the Committee of Council, the evidence of its officers, my own notes of attendance at each lesson of every normal school class in at least one complete round of its studies, the examination papers filled up by the senior classes of students, and my notes of personal interrogation in the others and of personal inspection in each department of the model schools. The model schools are, indeed, of older date than the normal schools which have grown out of them. That for boys is the same which was originally organized upon more humble premises, on the opposite side of the same street, by Joseph Lancaster himself, in 1798. His own narrative will best trace its infant Course: "The undertaking," he says, "was begun under the hospitable |