CHAPTER XII.

OFFICE OF SPECIAL INQUIRIES AND REPORTS.

1. Assistance Rendered to the Dominions and Colonies.

324. During the year 1926 the Office of Special Inquiries and Reports was asked to recommend teachers for eighteen posts in the Crown Colonies, eleven for men and seven for women. In three cases no decision has yet been arrived at. The posts in question were five elementary school masters and one secondary school master for the Bahamas; two teachers of Agriculture, one for Fiji and one for Nigeria; a lecturer in English for Hong Kong University; Readers in Chemistry and in Physics for Raffles College, Singapore; a Vice-Principal for the Training College for Elementary School Mistresses at Jerusalem; an Inspectress of Schools for Ceylon, and mistresses for the Federated Malay States, Hong Kong, the Gold Coast, and Sierra Leone.

During the year statements of the professional qualifications and service of ninety-one teachers from England and Wales were dispatched to oversea Education Departments; of these twenty-nine contemplated emigration to Canada and ten to Australia.

An account of the interchange of teachers with the Dominions will be found in Chapter I of this Report.

2. Educational Pamphlets.

325. A new pamphlet has been added to the series of educational pamphlets-A report on Men's Institutes in the administrative County of London, Educational Pamphlet No. 48. This report gives an account of a very interesting and valuable experiment conducted by the London Education Authority in the field of adult education.

3. Imperial Education Conference.

326. It has now been decided that the next meeting of the Imperial Education Conference shall be held in London from June 20th to July 8th next. The Agenda has not yet been finally settled, but the following subjects will be amongst those discussed by the Conference :-

(a) Education in Relation to the Pupil's After-Career, with special reference to Problems of Post-Primary Education. (b) Rural Education.

(c) Problems peculiar to Tropical and Sub-Tropical Countries where the population is of more than one race.

In addition, the Interchange of Teachers, and the Possibilities of Wireless Broadcasting and of the Cinematograph in Schools, will be discussed.

4. Scheme for the Exchange of Modern Language Teachers between England and France.

327. For the school year 1925-26 the Office of Special Inquiries and Reports was asked to find candidates for sixty-four posts in secondary schools and training colleges in France. Twenty Assistants (six men and fourteen women) were appointed to the secondary school vacancies and twenty-nine (five Répétiteurs and twenty-four Répétitrices) to the vacancies in the training colleges, a total of forty-nine appointments as compared with forty-nine (eleven men Assistants, eleven women Assistantes, seven Répétiteurs and twenty Répétitrices) in 1924–25.

For the school year 1925-26 fifty-five French Assistants (eighteen men and thirty-seven women) were appointed to secondary schools and university institutions in England and Wales. The number of appointments in 1924-25 was forty-nine, namely, fifteen men and thirty-four women.

5. The Library of the Board of Education.

328. It is now thirty years since the Board's Reference Library was formed, by the amalgamation of the greater part of the educational works previously kept in the Science Library at the South Kensington Museum and of the Library of the Education Department in Whitehall. The following short account of the development of the Library to its present form may be of interest.

329. The Educational Museum, South Kensington.-In 1854 a special loan exhibition of English and foreign educational appliances was held under the direction of the Society of Arts at St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, and at its close many of the exhibits were left by their contributors at the disposal of the Society. These were subsequently handed over by the Society to the Science and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Education; and in 1857 when the Museum at South Kensington was formed, a portion of the temporary iron buildings was appropriated for their display. Publishers and manufacturers were invited to add to this collection. by loans, and the invitation was very widely accepted. For the next ten years the books, school furniture, elementary scientific apparatus, drawing models, and other educational appliances were displayed as one collection under the title of the Educational Museum.

330. The Educational Library, South Kensington.—In 1867 the school furniture and other educational appliances were moved elsewhere, but the books were retained at the Museum, and formed the nucleus of the Educational Library. The collection was largely increased by gifts from publishers and from various exhibitions at home and abroad. A reading room had already been opened, and

to meet the demands of the readers, mostly students of the Science and Art Schools of the Department, a number of more advanced text-books and works of reference were provided. To these were added reports and other works bearing on the history and progress of education in this and other countries, together with numerous educational periodicals both English and foreign. In 1876 a library of general literature which had been formed for the use of Inspectors and other officers at the central offices of the Committee of Council on Education in Whitehall was moved to South Kensington and amalgamated with the Educational Library there.

Six years later, as a result of the transfer of all the courses of instruction in science, with the exception of that in mining, from Jermyn Street to South Kensington, it was decided that all the books from the Library of the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street which were not required by the Staff of the Geological Survey or by the mining class, should be moved to South Kensington, so that they might be at the disposal of the professors and students of the National School of Science.

331. In 1882 a Committee of Advice and Reference was set up to examine and report on the educational collections of the South Kensington Museum. As a result of their report a Minute was issued on 19th July, 1883, which contained the following amongst other directions :

(1) The books relating to Science in the Educational Library to be amalgamated with the books brought from Jermyn Street and formed into a Science Library, special facilities being afforded to the Professors of the Normal School to have out on loan such as they require. The books on Art to be added to the Art Library.

(2) Books relating to the history, science and art of education, English and foreign; reports and memoirs relating to public instruction at home and abroad; educational periodicals of all countries; reports, calendars, examination papers, etc., of public educational institutions to be formed into a separate section by themselves.

A catalogue of portions of the Educational division of the South Kensington Museum had been issued in 1857, and revised editions of this catalogue were prepared from time to time. In 1893 the tenth edition of this catalogue was published under the title Catalogue of the Education Library in the South Kensington Museum."

"

332. Removal to Whitehall.-At the end of 1896 the Educational Library was moved to Whitehall. At the beginning of the previous year an office of Special Inquiries and Reports had been established at the Education Department by the late Sir A. H. Dyke Acland, at that time Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Educa

tion, and Mr. (now Sir) M. E. Sadler had been appointed the first Director of Special Inquiries and Reports. It was understood from the first that the Director should have full opportunities of using the Education Library, and as the work of his office developed it was essential that the Library should be housed somewhere in or near Whitehall. It was proposed, therefore, that the charge of the Educational Library should be assigned to the staff of the Office of Special Inquiries. After some discussion with the Department of Science and Art as to the categories of books which should be transferred, the transfer took place and by the end of 1896 the greater part of the books were moved from South Kensington to rooms at 43 Parliament Street, Whitehall, and placed in the charge of the Office of Special Inquiries and Reports. To this collection were added a certain number of books already in the possession of the Education Department. An author and title card catalogue was prepared. The Library then contained about 7,000 volumes and a representative variety of foreign educational magazines. In 1897 the Special Inquiries Department and the Library were moved to rooms at St. Stephen's House, Cannon Row.

This was the beginning of the Board's present Reference Library. The following year a lending library, comprising official reports on education and selected foreign works on educational subjects, was established for the use of Your Majesty's Inspectors and other officers of the Board.

333. In 1903 Mr. Twentyman was appointed the first Librarian of the Board of Education, a post which he held until March 1926. As long as the Library was at St. Stephen's House the books were distributed among the different rooms occupied by the officers of the Department, and it was not possible to allow the public access to the shelves. Whilst this was the case, the actual arrangement of the books on the shelves was of slight importance, but with the removal to the new buildings the case was different, as it was now possible to allow the readers direct access to the shelves. In view of this altered state of affairs it was decided to adopt a scheme of arrangement based on a subject classification. An examination of the different well-known schemes of classification led to the conclusion that none of them was directly suited to the needs of the Board's Library, for they were all devised to meet the requirements of general libraries, and their analysis of "Education" was not sufficiently elastic to cover the more minute sub-divisions required by a specialised library. It was decided, therefore, with some reluctance to frame a special classification scheme for the Library. It was a matter of regret that at that date the Library of Congress List of Subject Headings was not available. The re-classification of the Library was carried out by Mr. Twentyman, and when in 1908 the Library was moved to the new Offices of the Board in King Charles Street, Whitehall, the books were rearranged there

on the new system. Three large rooms on the ground floor of the New Public Offices had been designed for the Board's Library and the walls lined with specially fitted oak book shelves.

334. In 1909, the first of a series of quarterly annotated Lists of Accessions to the Library was prepared. These lists were not put on sale but were issued regularly until the middle of 1915, when owing to the war they were discontinued. In order to make the contents of the Library known to students who were unable to acquire the knowledge by frequent use, it was decided also to issue and place on sale a series of Subject Lists of books and papers in the Library. Two of these lists were published in 1913; the first dealt with School Hygiene and Physical Education, the second with Educational Buildings and Equipment. Since that date owing to the war and the subsequent restriction of expenditure it has been impossible to continue the publication of this series, but a third bibliography dealing with Psychological Tests is now practically complete.

335. In 1917 a large portion of the Board's staff was moved to South Kensington in order to make room for the Ministry of Munitions. It was decided to move the Library also, and accordingly rooms were set aside for it and for the Inspectors' Circulating Library in some of the Galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Here the Library remained until October 1921, when it once more returned to Whitehall. But the rooms which had been originally designed for it had passed in the meantime into the hands of the Ministry of Health. The only accommodation which it was now found possible to give it was the three basement courts, in which it is at the present time housed. The Inspectors' Circulating Library had been already transferred to the Inspectors' new headquarters at 24, Old Queen Street, Westminster.

336. The Library now contains upwards of 57,000 books. The books are arranged on a decimal system of subject classification adapted from the various well-known systems of decimal classification already in existence. The largest section consists of books and official publications dealing with the organisation and administration of education in all parts of the world. An attempt is made to procure for this section copies of all the more important educational laws and documents which are published in different countries. Other sections of the Library contain books on Theories of Education, Special Methods of Teaching, Psychology, School Hygiene and Physical Education and School Buildings. There are also sections containing Histories of Education, Biographies, Annual Reports of Educational Associations and bound volumes of pamphlets. During the last few years the Psychology section has grown considerably, particularly in the direction of books dealing with psychological tests