penal servitude or imprisonment.

Guardians of the poor

have no power to contribute to these schools 1.

Lord Aberdare's Commission, which inquired into Reformatories and Schools in 1884, has been the only body besides the Powis Commission which included Ireland in its investigations. It recommended that the literary education should be tested in all cases by Inspectors of the National Board of Education 2, and that payment by results should be made to these as to ordinary National Schools, though it would not be necessary to insist on the teachers having certificates.

3

In Ireland there was more grading of Reformatories and also of Industrial Schools by the age of the children. The certified Industrial Schools in Ireland are regarded as institutions for poor and deserted children rather than for semi-criminals, probably because there is no other means of compelling street urchins to attend school.

Consequently young children who are criminal in a very slight degree and in England would probably be sent to Industrial Schools, are sent in Ireland to Reformatories, and the older and more criminal children do not appear in them at all.

Some twenty years ago the proportion of very young children committed to Reformatories was in this way unduly large, but the percentage of those under twelve has sunk from 32.7 committed in 1880 to 21.7 in 1896, while the children under eight in Industrial Schools have risen from 28.1 to 34-8 in the same year. In 1882 918 out of 1,256 children sent to Industrial Schools were thus committed because they were found begging or asking for alms,' and children have been actually sent out to beg with this aim in view ".

9

Aberdare, par. 94.

2 par. 89. 4 İbid. Q. 1,917. 7 Ibid. par. 91.

In Scotland a child has been directed to steal

for the same purpose (Argyll Report, 1865, p. 255)..

In many cases the pupils of the Industrial Schools attend the ordinary National Schools as full-time pupils'. If they keep the hundred attendances requisite, they are examined as for results fees. But their expenses are paid by the Industrial Schools Department, and not in any way by the Commissioners of National Education.

In 1883, out of seventy-one schools of both classes, the pupils of thirty-two were attending National Schools'. The schools were usually under the same managers as the National Schools attended, but no objection ever seems to have been made to such attendance. In one case indeed the nuns managing an Industrial School withdrew their children from contamination with the pupils of a National School 5. The principal object of sending the children to public schools is to obtain the judgment of the Inspectors of the National Board. Even Industrial Schools not in connexion with the Board were voluntarily examined by the National Examiners".

Except for such examination there was in 1884 very little literary inspection of Industrial Schools in Ireland', and the Inspector naturally did not regard this as a sufficient guarantee in all cases, though the different educational bodies in charge of some of the schools examined them in an efficient manner 8. The Aberdare Commission reported that the industrial training was better there than in England, and that more children afterwards followed the trades they had been taught.

In fact it still seems to be the case, that the only systematic industrial training in the country is to be obtained in these schools 10.

In 1896 there were six Reformatories in Ireland and seventy-one Industrial Schools 11.

11

7 Ibid. Q. 12,414.

10 Contemporary Review, April, 1898, p. 578: 'Irish Elementary Education,' by Edith F. Hogg and A. D. Innes.

11 Inspector's Report for 1895, p. 1.

In the end of 1896 there were 553 children in Reformatory Schools, and 7,927 in Industrial Schools.

There was one ship for boys at Belfast, and a fishing school at Baltimore, now recognized by the National Board. There is no provision for Day Industrial Schools in Ireland, nor are there any Truant Schools.

9. THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD FOR IRELAND. The Irish Poor Law was introduced in 1838 by 1 & 2 Vict. c. 56, when regular workhouses were first erected. A Local Government Board was created in 1872 by 35 & 36 Vict. c. 69 to take over the duties of the Poor Law Commissioners'.

The Commissioners made rules that a schoolmaster and mistress should be appointed by the Board, and that the children should be educated for three hours at least every day 2.

The 49th section of the Act of 1838 was quoted in the Rules and Regulations for that year of the Board of National Education as explanatory of their rules of religious instruction.

'No order of the Poor Law Commissioners nor any bylaw... shall authorize the education of any child in any workhouse in any religious creed other than that professed by the parents or surviving parent of such child, and to which such parents or parent shall object, or in the case of an orphan to which the guardian or guardians, godfather or godmother, of such orphan shall object. Provided also that it shall be lawful for any regular minister of the religious persuasion of any inmate of such workhouse at all times in 2 Powis, Q. 10,632.

1 Cf. 10 & JI Vict. c. 90.

the day, on the request of such inmate, to visit such workhouse for the purpose of affording religious assistance to such inmate, and also for the purpose of instructing his child or children in the principles of his religion.'

In 1843 the Commissioners of National Education received workhouse schools into connexion on condition of their observing this rule and submitting to their inspection. Grants of books only were made to them1. In 1850 the Commissioners, with the concurrence of the Poor Law Commissioners, awarded grants to forty male and forty female teachers of these schools on the recommendation of the District Inspectors.

In 1855 it was definitely required that all the rules of the Board applicable to Non-Vested Schools must be observed.

In 1871 the view of the Irish Workhouse School taken by the Irish Poor Law Commissioners was that, 'shut off as it is from all contact with adults other than the teachers, it differs in no respect materially from the boarding school to which parents in a better class of life send their children from home for the purpose of a more systematic course of education and discipline 2.'

The schools are examined on the same plan as the ordinary National Schools, and extracts from the reports of the Inspector are sent to the Local Government Board for the information of the different Boards of Guardians on the plan which was abolished in England in 1863. The salaries of the teachers are fixed by the Poor Law Authorities and paid from the Consolidated Fund. By the National School Teachers (Ireland) Act, 1875, power was given to the Guardians of awarding to the teachers of their Poor Law Union National Schools from the rates, the amount of results fees which would have been payable in a National School on the Inspector's Reports, and the National Board in 1877 discontinued their system of gratuities.

1 1843, viii. 2.

2 Report for 1870–71, p. 13. 338 & 39 Vict. c. 96.

In 1848, by 11 and 12 Vict. c. 25, the Poor Law Commissioners were given power to combine Unions into Districts for schools, but it is only within the last ten years that two District schools for eleven Unions have been formed at Trim and Glin.

Most of the workhouse schools are separate for boys and girls. Farms from two to twenty-five acres are attached to all Unions, and some boys acquire practical instruction in agriculture. After April 1, 1863, the Commissioners of National Education, at the request of the Government, discontinued the assistance they had given to the agricultural department of these schools'; but in 1897 they consented to allow inspection and examination by their officers 2.

District Inspectors are prepared to examine at the workhouse any boarded-out Pauper Children attending any school not being a National School3.

For the power of Unions to become contributory to the salaries of National teachers, vide p. 108.

By 1876 153 Poor Law Schools were in connexion with the Board, and only five remained outside; in 1897 the number was 154, but the numbers attending these schools have greatly decreased.

4

Besides the ordinary Military Schools under the War Office, there is a special institution for the children of

1

37th Report, Commissioners of National Education, App. p. 30. 2 63rd Report, p. 18. 358th Report: for 1891, p. 98. In 1895 thirty army schoolmasters and thirty-seven mistresses, besides acting teachers, were serving in Ireland (Director-General's Report, 1896, pp. 19, 23). Vide p. 75.