THE ENGLISH EDUCATION ACT.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1619, 29 April 1879, Page 4

THE ENGLISH EDUCATION ACT.

Tho “Daily News ” of the 21st January says: —Lord Sandon’s Education Act of 1876 arrived at another stage in its progressive application at the beginning of the present year. Tho principle of the Act, which will come into full operation in 1881, is that no child between tho ages of ten and fourteen is to be employed in any labour unless ho has passed an examination in the Fourth Standard, or has attended school 250 times yearly for five years since ho was five years old, or lias satisfied tho requirements of any educational by-laws which may bo in force in his parish. During the year 1879 this rule will be modified, and a child of ton may be sent to work if ho has passed an examination in tho Third Standard, or has been to school 250 times in each of any three years since his fifth birthday. Tho requirements of tho Third Standard are not onerous. They '.consist in reading short paragraphs from an advanced, but still elementary reading* hook, writing a sentence slowly, die*

tated from the same book, and working sums in long division, compound addition and subtraction, including pounds, shillings, and pence. Labor certificates will therefore, during this year, bo grunted to children ten years old who have fulfilled these conditions. The exemption still remains in force that any child lawfully at work on or before the 15th August, 1876, may continue at work as though the’Act had not been passed; while all children who were eleven years old before the Ist of January, 1877, are practically outside its operation this year. For the purpose of facilitating the issue of these labour certificates the managers of every school must send to the School Board or the School Attendance Committee of its district a list of all the children in the school and the number of atto dances each child has made during the year, except such as may have been made before he was five years old. It will be interesting to the public to know in the next education report how far these returns are made, and how these labor certificates continue to work.