'Over Pressure' and Elementary Education

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. PAYMENT BY RESULTS. SUGGESTED ABOLITION OF PAYMENT BY RESULTS. PRESENT SYSTEM.--EDUCATION BEFORE 1861. ALTERNATIVES TO PAYMENT BY RESULTS. ADVANTAGES OF EXISTING SYSTEM. The much-abused Revised Code of 1861-2, introduced by Mr. Lowe, was intended to place the education of the country on a definite and final basis, instead of allowing it to continue a preliminary, provisional, and tentative system. The most important proposal emanating from the Teachers is, that the policy thus introduced should be completely reversed, and that payment by results --the supposed root of all evil--should be abolished. i To hear the abuse levelled against payment by results,--or payment for efficiency, as it really is--the uninitiated would imagine that the whole of the grant was paid for individual examination, and that the Code was a cast-iron system of pass or fail, to which every child must be subjected once a year. It would probably greatly astonish him to learn that infants under seven are not individually examined at all, and though infants above seven may be examined individually, no schedule of passes or particulars of the examination are kept; that for the elder children individual examination takes place in the elementary subjects alone--reading, writing, and arithmetic. Further, that little more than a third of the whole grant is a payment for individual results, the average amount in England and Wales being in 1884-5 but 6s. d. out of a total grant of 175-. 2d. per child in average The grant in infants' schools consists of a fixed grant of from is. to gs.; a merit grant of 2s., 4s., or 6. j a grant of is. for needlework for the children taught; and of is. to 6d. for singing. The average amount earned in 1884-5 m England and Wales was...