EDUCATION BOARD SCHOLARSHIPS.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9604, 19 December 1896, Page 7

EDUCATION BOARD SCHOLARSHIPS.

The Education Board Scholarship' examinations, which finished yesterday, show as usual nn astonishing disparity between the numbers entering for the Senior and Junior Scholarships respectively. For the former there were 14 boys and 7 girls competing, and for tho latter 110 boys and 70 girls. Under the old regulations, when only those who had won Junior Scholarships could compete for the Senior, it was to be expected that the number of candidates for the latter would be limitod. The new rules are much more liberal, but it is evident, as the Head Master of Christ's College pointed out the other night, that even yet they do not go quite far enough. It is no longer required that a candidate for a Senior Scholarship should have previously won a Junior Scholarship, &ut for some inecrutable reason it is stipulated that he or she shall have gone in for the Junior Scholarship examination. This not only shuts out many promising children who, from illness or other causes, may not have been able to comply with this condition, but the requirement itself is obviously illogical and likely to lead to inconvenience. The chief effect of such a regulation will be to give the Inspectors a good deal of unnecessary trouble, since many children who have no chance of gaining a Junior Scholarship will be sent in for the examination merely to satisfy the formal requirements of the Board, in case they should ever desire to compete for a Senior Scholarship. It is impossible to see what qualifying virtue there can be in .having merely entered for one examination and failed, that this should be made a test condition in connection with another examination. A far better plan would be to throw open the Senior Scholarships examinations to all children of the prescribed age who had passed a certain standard in , the, Insppqior's examinations* or. attended a prescribed number of years in a primary school.