The Higher Elementary Schools

THE Bryce Commission, in their advocacy of the scholarship ladder, envisaged that the rungs separating the elementary from the secondary school would be climbed by children of 'exceptional rather than of average ability'. ¹ This limited conception of secondary education was very widespread at the turn of the century, and was held by the various Conservative Ministries between 1895 and 1906, so that it became, for this period, the official policy of the Board of Education. It was expected that the bulk of secondary school pupils would be fee-payers from middle-class or lower-middle-class homes, although a limited proportion of the able children from the working classes would enter on scholarships. In justification of this view it was held that a full secondary school course was unsuitable for the majority of working-class children, who would be better provided for in the ordinary elementary school. Sir John Gorst, for example, gave it as his opinion that 'while primary instruction should be provided for, and even enforced upon all, advanced instruction is for the few. It is the interest of the commonwealth at large that every boy and girl showing capacities above the average should be caught and given the best opportuinites for developing these capacities. It is not its interest to scatter broadcast a huge system of higher instruction for any one who chooses to take advantage of it, however unfit to receive it'. ²