5. Certificate Examination for Acting Teachers in Elementary Schools, 1922.

228. The following table shows the number of persons who entered for the Certificate Examination for 1922, the number who passed, the number who failed, and the percentage of the whole number entering who failed to pass, with comparative figures for the previous four years. The figures relate both to England and Wales:

In view of the decision not to hold the Certificate Examination for Acting Teachers which would in the ordinary course have been held in November, 1923, the Board made arrangements for the admission of ex-service candidates to a special Certificate Examination, which was held in connection with the Final Training College Examination in the summer of 1923. The following table shows the results of this examination :

6. Training of Teachers for Secondary Schools.

229. The number of Training Colleges recognised for the year 1922-23 as providing courses of training for Secondary Schools under Chapter IX of the Regulations for the Training of Teachers was twenty-five. This included sixteen University Training Departments; three Training Departments of University Colleges, which did not form part of a University; one two-year Training College, which also provided a course of training for Elementary Schools (the Maria Grey Training College); and five Training Colleges, which provided courses of post-graduate training only. The following table shows the number of recognised students who followed courses of training in these institutions during the year, with comparative figures for the two preceding years :

There were also during the year 1922-23 three students taking courses of training in Secondary Schools under the provisions of Article 69 of the Regulations.

7. Training of Teachers of Domestic Subjects.

230. The number of women students who followed courses of training in Training Colleges of Domestic Subjects during the year 1922-23 was 1,016. The corresponding figures for the two preceding years were 854 in 1920-21, and 983 in 1921-22. Most of these students were taking two-year courses, which provided instruction in Cookery, Laundrywork, and Housewifery, and led up to an examination for a diploma in Domestic Subjects, conducted either by the Board, or by an examining body approved for the College by the Board. Students who had completed a two-year course, and were specially recommended by the College Authorities were allowed to take a third-year course, which might provide for the special study either of Needlework and elementary Dressmaking, or of Science applied to Housecraft or Laundrywork or of Advanced Cookery. A third-year course might be taken either continuously with the original two-year course, or after an interval spent in teaching. The following table shows the number of students who completed satisfactorily courses of these various types in the year 1922-23.

8. Training of Ex-Service Men as Teachers.

231. Reference has been made in several previous Reports to the various schemes for training ex-service men to become teachers. [See Reports 1917-18 (paragraphs 170, 171), 1918–19 (paragraphs 209-213), 1919-20 (paragraphs 173, 174), 1920-21 (paragraph 132).] These schemes are now at an end, and it seems desirable to present a connected account of them with some estimate of their results.

232. A beginning was made in 1917, when the nation was considering its duty towards those men who had been discharged from the forces as unfit on account of wounds, or other disablements for further service. A committee set up by the Board, which included representatives of Local Education Authorities, had discussed in advance many questions concerning the treatment of ex-service men who would return to civil life either before or shortly after the cessation of hostilities. Among the most important of these questions was that affecting the position of men intending to become teachers, who had joined the forces either before completing their course of training, or when on the point of entering on their course. Some of these men had enlisted when their training was all but finished, others after having passed a year in a Training College, very many in their first term or early in their first year when the demand for recruits became imperative. The recommendations of the committee were accepted by the Board, and were embodied in Article 50 of the Regulations for the Training of Teachers. Men who had completed five out of the normal six terms at a Training College were granted the Board's certificate on passing the Board's final examination, or an equivalent test. This principle, which affected a relatively small number of men who may have left College at the Easter of their second year, was extended with very useful results to men who, after the Armistice, could not be disbanded in time to take a course of six terms at the usual dates; five terms being accepted for them instead of the normal six. These five terms covered the periods January to the second July, or Easter to the second December following, and the Colleges adapted themselves readily to the unusual circumstances arising from the attendance of groups of men, whose courses terminated at various dates.

To the rest of the men concerned, that is, those who had already had a broken period of training, two alternatives were offered. They could return to the Training College to complete their training up to a maximum of six or five terms; or they could be placed on probation, at once if they had completed a year of training, or after a special six months' period in college, if they had had less. The probation was for two years, during which period they were to rank as certificated teachers. If during that period they earned a report from the inspector that their work was satisfactory, they became permanently certificated teachers. Those whose period of training had been shorter than a year were

required to spend six months at a Training College before their probation, and to pass an examination in professional subjects at the end of the probation, besides obtaining a favourable report from the inspector. The Board informed the Training Colleges that the period of six months should be devoted to academic rather than to professional work. Important as professional training was, the men would reap a greater ultimate advantage, it was thought, if they were started afresh upon their general education in college under competent tutors. The professional studies were sacrificed in the expectation that the student could learn by his experience in schools under a sympathetic master.

233. The great majority of men elected for the first alternative and returned to college to complete their training. They were assisted to do so by the aid they received from the grants which Parliament voted for the further education and training of exofficers and men. For the first two years after 1919 the Training Colleges were full of ex-service men, and some Colleges were able to re-open even as early as Easter in 1919. The period was naturally an anxious one for the authorities of the Colleges, who had in many cases not only to deal with men reacting against the restrictions of military life, as well as accustomed to its freedom, but also in many instances to work with new staffs. The students were, of course, older than the ordinary students of pre-war times, and they had in most cases lost the habit of study. Many men of more mature age, sometimes over thirty, took advantage of the grant for ex-service students to obtain a training they had been unable to afford before. But no serious difficulties arose. The men recovered the ability to study after a few trying months. They were, with few exceptions, eager to make up for time lost in the war, and they were fully aware of their objective. The efforts they needed in order to recover the power of concentration and of learning, bred in them a serious modesty and a willingness to accept guidance which made tuition a task less onerous than might have been expected; and the experience of the Training Colleges in this respect corresponds very generally with the experience of the Universities and Colleges in dealing with their own ex-service students in many different faculties. The self-reliance which the war had brought, and the breadth of experience of many who had been to the distant seats of war, stood the men in very good stead when they came to teach classes; they entered the schools with the prestige of men who had served their country, and took command with an assurance that at once surmounted the earlier difficulties of discipline. In the final examination the results were very creditable, and nearly all reached a standard justifying the award of the certificate; sympathetic consideration was of course given in many cases to disability due to wounds and disease. Nothing but admiration is due to the pluck with which men who had lost limbs, or were affected by malaria, or shell shock encountered the task that lay before them.

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It is, perhaps, invidious to select special examples of determination and endurance, but one may be mentioned. A student in a London men's College had gone to the war and been totally blinded by a gunshot. On returning to college he continued his studies for a degree, achieved the London B.A., and prepared himself to teach in schools for the blind.

The men who elected to take a short course of six months and to go on probation, or to go on probation on the strength of the one year they had passed in college before enlisting, were not very numerous. One or two Colleges kindly undertook to deal with groups of such men for six months. Though the concession had to be made, it was generally felt to be a pity that the period in college was so short. Nearly all the men came successfully through the period of probation, which had to be extended to a third year in a very few instances. Some obtained so satisfactory a report on their training powers at an early stage as to justify the the immediate grant of the full certificate. Only a very small number of those who were preparing to go to college on the outbreak of war, or who were taken into the forces at eighteen during the war, chose to accept the concession of one year in college, which was granted to them under Article 50 (d). These few came successfully through their examination and through the period of probation.

234. The above paragraphs deal with men who had already embarked on a preparation for teaching. But already, before the end of the war, the committee referred to above had begun to consider under what conditions men might be admitted to the teaching profession who had not intended originally to be teachers, but whom disablement seemed likely to prevent from resuming their old career. By 1917 numbers of men had been discharged from the Army and Navy cured of their immediate wounds or disease, but permanently unfitted for service in the forces. It was represented by those who were in touch with the hospitals and convalescent centres that some of their patients on recovery would be worth training as teachers, and were eager to be trained. The mode of selection clearly could not be by examination; few would have passed the usual examinations which admit to Training Colleges. On the other hand, the committee were convinced that to train a body of men for any status below that of the certificated teacher would be wholly unjustifiable in the interests alike of the men and the schools.

235. Two advisory committees, one for England and the other for Wales, were set up to control the admission of disabled exservice men to Training Colleges. They consisted of officers of the Board, together with representatives of Local Education Authorities and of the National Union of Teachers. Their main function was to discuss the general principles of selection, in which they were guided by recommendations in some detail made by the office. committee. They were technically responsible for the machinery